A Mutated Reborn
by Cassie's Bedlam
Summary: She had lived and died, lived again and died again, then lived again and died again and now she was living again. This time she was a mutant and she wasn't staying back and watching things. This time she would change things, she would stop being a coward. Sequel to Hope's Second Rising.
1. Chapter 1

_Life was a Bitch, Death was a bigger Bitch, and Fate was the biggest Bitch in the history of everything. Seemed I was always going to end up in Hell, sure I had a fairly peaceful life before being dumped back into Hell, but still, I was seriously getting pissed off with the number of lives I was living._

_You think its fun being reborn into one of your favourite books, movies, games and so on? Then I have only one thing to say to you. You are an idiot. _

_It's scary, life-threating, mentally-scarring and horrifying. Something I learnt the first time round._

_My third life was mostly peaceful (I finally got my real pokémon) and for some reason I disliked it because it was peaceful. The ten-odd years I had of my second life had gotten me used to danger, to the thrill of battle and sure you got to see pokémon battles (which was epic) but the criminals were idiots and most of the people were horribly cheerful and __**nice**__. _

_Cheerful people always annoyed me for some reason—it was a trait that I shared with my mum. _

_My fourth life I hear you ask? Well it had just really started, but I can already tell that it's going to be much like my second one. However long that was. _

_I hate Nazis by the way._

* * *

She hated crying. It didn't matter if she was crying, someone else was crying, watching someone cry or just listening to someone crying, she hated it all the same.

The crying of women who knew they were going to die, the confused crying of children as their mothers held them tightly and rocked them. That was the worse type of crying that she had ever heard and she hoped she would never hear it again, though she doubted she would get her silent wish.

She leaned back against the wall, not even concerned about the fact that she was completely naked, and watched as one of the women beat at the locked door of the 'shower' chamber as she screamed for mercy in German or Polish—did the Polish have their own language or did they speak German as well?

Nazis didn't give any mercy to anyone.

There was an elderly woman next to her whom she had helped take a seat as the elder woman struggled, and their bare shoulders brushed against each other as they watched the scene unfold.

She wasn't crying. She stared hard-eyed at the panicked pack of women and children that were packed tightly together. The old crone was a strong woman, she didn't fear the death that they all knew was coming and that earned her respect.

She reached out and held the woman's old wrinkled and gnarled hand and the elderly woman gave her a tight smile. It was amazing how pale and smooth her hand looked like against the other woman's hand, but then again she thought she was a lot younger than the woman (roughly around her mid-teens).

And she was about to die already, again.

It was then the gas began to pour down the 'shower' heads and the screaming began as thick acrid black smoke rushed in and blinded everyone as they began to scream, to cry harder, to beat their bodies against the walls as the poisonous gas burnt them red as blisters swelled on skin, making breath seize in their chests, gas choking them to a painful death.

Well everyone apart from her.

* * *

_Being gassed wasn't fun, it hurt and blinded me as well as choking me. But I once had my whole face melted off so it wasn't the worst pain I had ever felt in my lives._

_Watching the blisters on my arms heal over and over again was interesting and almost comforting—I had missed having my healing ability in my second life when I was being fired by Thunderbolts and set on fire by Flamethrowers because pokémon had strange ways of show affection sometimes. _

_I guess I was a mutant now as I naturally and rapidly healing—basically regenerative healing abilities so I was basically the Cheerleader from Heroes._

_(Only I wasn't really blonde—my new shade of hair was either a light brunette or dark blonde—and so wasn't a Cheerleader. I never wanted to be popular anyway)_

_Still, the worse thing about being in a Nazi gas chamber? The screams and the cries of the others who were actually dying._

* * *

"—sixty-eight bottles of beer on the wall, sixty-eight bottles of beer, you take one down and pass it around," she sung loudly as she caught sight of another one of the Nazi guards peer through a slit in the door. "Sixty-seven bottles of beer on the wall, sixty-seven bottles of beer, you take one down and pass it around."

They had been peering at her since they slid open the door and realised that one of the supposedly dead prisoners was actually still alive and perfectly fine despite being surrounded by nude dead bodies. It had freaked them out and she had never seen an iron door close so fast in her lives.

Truly, she had gotten too used to the morbid and odd turns her lives took if she was taking amusement from freaking out Nazi guards while surrounded by dead people.

Well, if she didn't take amusement in the shit Life threw at her then she would be a mopey depressed girl who would moan about her life and how it wasn't fair and how it shouldn't be happening to her because she was really a nobody and wasn't that interesting.

She did not want to be that girl.

"Sixty-six bottles of beer on the wall, sixty-six bottles of beer, you take one down and pass it around," she was almost sure that she was skipping a few words in the song but she didn't really care as she was just aiming to annoy and freak out the Nazis—which she was doing.

She paused in her song as the bolts of the door slid open with a groan and the door opened again, this time just a single man was illuminated by the too bright sun.

"You look remarkably alive," the man commented and something clicked in the back of her mind at the sound of his voice.

So this was Sabastian Shaw or Klaus Schmidt as he was going by at the moment.

"I feel alive," she told him and he laughed as he stepped in slightly, his shiny shoes inches from the bloated body of one of the women.

"Bold," he flashed her a smile. "A woman before her time."

"You have no idea," she remarked wryly.

"You must be cold," he commented, his gaze barely taking in her naked form that was budding into a more mature figure. "Come."

It was an order and she had learnt her lesson once before so she stood up and carefully stepped over the bodies, her stomach lurching slightly at the red and swollen faces of some of the children that seemed to be staring at her—it was creepy—before stopping just in front of him.

He smiled warmly at her, a smile that didn't really reach his eyes, and took of his blazer and handed it to her. She slipped it on, the end of the blazer resting at her mid-thigh, the sleeves dwarfing her hands as she buttoned up the few buttons to cover her better.

"I'm Doctor Klaus Schmidt," he introduced himself as he lead her out of the chamber with a guiding hand to her back. "What's your name?"

"I don't have one," she answered easily because she didn't have a name at the moment and she didn't really care about what sort of name that Schmidt gave her.

"How about Anastasia?" he asked though she was sure that it wasn't really a question.

"Resurrection," she shot him a look. "How original."

He just smiled at her.

"It's a mouthful so call me Ana," she told him as she was lead passed the Nazi guards and towards Klaus' place.

_And so started another life under the hands of a mad doctor._

* * *

Erik didn't know how he had made the gates bend, he had never done anything like that before, but he knew that was why the Doctor, Dr Schmidt, was calling him to see him and why the Nazi guards were taking him to Schmidt's office.

Schmidt's office was strange. It was a large room split into two by a wall and door of glass—that part of the room was sterile white with two metal tables and a wall filled with tools and such.

His stomach lurched when he realised that a person was laying on one of the metal slabs. Petite pale feet faced him and a small blanket covered their lower half while their top had been cut in a Y section and was pulled back to reveal all their inner workings.

"Ah, Erik," Schmidt greeted and Erik torn his gaze from the person and the table and stared pale faced at the Doctor.

The Doctor was sat at his desk and gestured for Erik to come closer. Schmidt smiled at him as he reached in one of his desks draws drawers and removed a bar of chocolate, then slowly unwrapped it.

Erik stared almost transfixed at the chocolate as Schmidt broke a bit off—it had been what seemed like forever since he last had chocolate—and it was easier to stare at the chocolate than to stare at Schmidt or the body on the table the other side of the glass.

"Understand this, Erik," Schmidt said as he popped a bit of chocolate into his mouth. "These Nazis, I'm not like them. Genes are the key, yes? But their goals? Blue eyes? Blond hair? Pathetic."

He smiled at Erik and pushed the chocolate towards Erik.

"Want some?" Schmidt asked. "It's good."

"I want to see my mama," Erik stated as firmly as he could.

"Genes are the key that unlocks the door of a new age, Erik. A new future for mankind. Evolution. You know what I'm talking about?" Schmidt asked, ignoring him. Erik shook his head. "You're special like Anastasia," he nodded towards the girl on the slab and reached out for his bell and rung it sharply.

Erik bit back a scream as the body sat up and he met the glacier blue eyes of a girl around his age—she was alive. Her long hair fell down to her shoulders and framed her face. She reached out and pulled her hanging skin into place and they mended together seamlessly.

She slid off the table and reached for a folded robe and slipped it on before padding barefoot into the office.

She gave him an odd look before she perched on the desk and took some of Schmidt's chocolate.

"Anastasia is rather amazing," he told him almost proudly. "She heals at an astonishing rate, she can regrow limbs, organs and can basically come back from the dead." Erik glanced at Anastasia, her face was tight but she showed no sign of really hearing Schmidt as she chewed on her chocolate. "You are special too, but in a different way. I have something for you to do, it's a simple thing I ask of you," he placed a silver coin on the desk in front of Erik. "A little coin is nothing compared to a big gate is it? I want you to move it."

Erik focused on the coin, willing it to move and even threw his hands out again like when he made the gate move and bend. Nothing happened though, not even a twitch of movement as Erik tried as hard as he could to make it move.

He couldn't, he didn't know how he moved the gate so couldn't make the coin move.

"I tried, Herr Doctor. I can't…I don't…It's impossible," he said as he gave up. Schmidt leaned back as he made a disappointed noise.

"The one thing I can say for the Nazis is their methods seem to produce results," he motioned towards the guards at the door after which they left. "I am sorry Erik."

Anastasia shifted slightly, her gaze almost sympathetic as she looked up at him and Erik turned as the door opened again and guards brought with them—

"Mama!" he reached for her and she did the same.

She already seemed thinner in the striped dress they had given her and there was no hair sticking out from under her scarf.

"My darling," she cried. "How are you?"

"Here's what we're going to do," Schmidt interrupted as the guards seized his mother and pulled her back. "I'm going to count to three and you're going to move the coin," he waited till Erik was looking at him and pointed a gun at Erik's mother. "You don't move the coin, I pull the trigger, understand?"

"One,"

"Mama," Erik's tone was pained and Anastasia turned her face away.

"You can do it," his mother reassured him.

"Two,"

"Everything is all right," his mother promised him.

"Three,"

The almost muted sound of the gun made Erik jump as he turned slowly to peer at his mother's crumbled form.

Rage and pain like he had never felt before rushed through his veins and he screamed as he thrust out with his hands, the bell of Schmidt's desk being crushed inwards.

"Yes, wonderful," Schmidt sounded delighted as Erik turned his attention to the filing cabinets and crushed them. "Excellent."

"NO!" Erik screamed as he crushed the helmets on the guards' heads before making a mess of the torture room until he was spent and was left trembling in grief and exhaustion.

"Outstanding, Erik," Schmidt clapped one of his hands on Erik's shoulders and led him into the torture room, the soft padding of bare feet told Erik that Anastasia was following them. "So we unlock your gift with anger. Anger and pain." Schmidt smiled as he pressed the coin into Erik's hand. "You and me, we're going to have a lot of fun together."

Schmidt seemed to be almost laughing as he left. Erik stared blankly at the coin that was staying in place in his open palm.

A pale hand clasped over his and covered the coin from his sight. He looked up and saw Anastasia staring around the trashed room with a deeply satisfied look on her slender face.

"One day," she began as she looked at him with hard glacier eyes. "We'll kill him."

He held her hand tightly, their palms pressing the design of the cursed coin deep into the other's palm.

"Yes," he promised before he let the tears fall. Anastasia hugged him as he mourned his mother's senseless death.

_It was a promise of a life-time and one I would keep, even if I made it to baby Magneto._

* * *

**_AN: The start of her fourth life has began, what do you think?_**


	2. Chapter 2

_My life as Hope helped prepare me for my life as Ana. Schmidt wasn't as sadistic as Duerr and wasn't attempting to make me a Super-Soldier. He just wanted to see the depth of my power and expand on it really._

_Erik didn't have any previous experience to help him through what Schmidt put him through. While I was fifteen years old like him, I had around one hundred years in my head to help me through whatever Schmidt threw at me._

* * *

Bang!

Something in Erik broke as he screamed, anger and pain rushed through his veins as he watched Ana fall backwards, glacier eyes blank and glazed over and face slack as blood trailed down her pale face from the rather neat hole in her head.

He channelled that into his power and crushed the cube of thick metal in front of him, fighting not to attack Schmidt as he seemed to mockingly clap at Erik's success.

He stood still, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists that shook with the depths of his emotion, as Schmidt peered at the crumbled metal with a critical eye for a moment.

"Wonderful," Schmidt complimented before gesturing almost carelessly towards Ana's prone form. "You can remove the bullet now."

Something in his knees cracked from how hard he landed on the floor next to her, and his hand trembled slightly as he held it over the bullet hole and he barely had to focus as a crumpled bullet pulled itself from her head—he had done it enough times now.

He watched as the bone mended before the skin fused over it, leaving only blood behind to show what had happened, and life came back into her eyes as she gave a startled gasp.

"Almost a whole minute faster, amazing," Schmidt complimented Ana—she came back from her death-like state faster and faster as time went on, which Schmidt was happy about.

Ana grimaced and reached up to wipe the blood from her eyes and brow before it could truly blind her.

"I hate guns," she muttered as Schmidt left them alone in the room.

* * *

_I had never really gotten to know Magneto before my death as Hope, but I didn't really mind that fact. I hadn't yet had a past relationship conflicting with any of my present relationships, so I got to know Erik, not Magneto._

_I know that one day I will encounter the Professor, especially if I stick with Erik, and I wonder how it'll feel. Looking into the eyes of my once mentor and see a young and largely inexperienced man who just brought the first of the X-Men together. _

_I had seen the movies so I knew that Xavier wasn't the man I had known and respected, but one day, he would be._

* * *

Erik watched the coin as it circled around his flat hand before glancing across the room at where Ana sat on her bed. She was thumbing through a well-read copy of the banned book The Hobbit.

Schmidt treated them well enough when they weren't 'training' their powers. They were given good clothes, a good bed, some toys and books and good food. Some would say that weren't even treated like prisoners, but they were wrong.

They was just stuck in a pretty cage.

"Are you attempting to burn a hole in my head or am I just that pretty that you can't take your eyes off me?" Ana asked dryly as she glanced at him with warm glacier blue eyes.

Erik ducked his head with a slight blush and a smile.

Sometimes it made Erik wonder how at ease Ana was for a tortured prisoner. He hadn't seen her flinch once no matter what horror that Schmidt put her through. It was almost like she was used to being a prisoner and that made something in him twist—would he one day end up like Ana? Near-indifferent even when being captured and tortured? Or would he be so full of rage that he became like Schmidt?

Erik never made the mistake of thinking that Ana was meek or scared and that was why she did most things without a fuss. Watching Ana put a guard twice her size on his ass after he attempted to be too touchy with her was a real eye-opener because of the ease that she did it and how it was almost instinctual.

He had seen the way she had blinked almost in confusion as if she hadn't been completely aware what she was doing until she had the guard on the ground and was twisting his arm behind his back as the other guards levelled their guns on her—they didn't shoot her, though Erik was sure they would have if Schmidt hadn't shown up.

Schmidt had given Ana a strange and almost proud smile and had patted her head, which caused her tiny shoulders to tighten but she didn't attack him and Erik was almost disappointed.

He had been sure that Ana could break them out of Auschwitz if she tried but for some reason she didn't. When he asked her why, she had given him a look and told him that if they escaped while the Nazis were winning or seemingly winning, then they would be hunted down and whatever happened to them after would be worse than whatever Schmidt decided to do to them under the guise of helping them.

He had to grudgingly admit that she was right.

"You haven't answered my question," Ana interrupted his thoughts and he looked up at her.

"You've been captured before," it wasn't a question, it was a statement of fact.

Ana didn't look up at him but her slim fingers paused from their flicking through the book.

"Yes," there was a tone of warning in her voice that almost made him hesitate in his questions but he was too curious.

He was curious about Ana, how she seemed so much older despite being the same age as him, how she was able to fight someone twice her size without breaking sweat. He wanted to know everything he could about her.

"By someone like Schmidt?" he asked.

"By someone worse," she told him with certainty and Erik frowned—he couldn't imagine someone worse than Schmidt—she glanced up and gave a humourless smile like she could hear his thoughts. "There are many men worse than Schmidt out there, you just haven't had the displeasure of meeting them yet."

"How?" Erik wasn't sure what he was asking but Ana seemed to understand.

"In his own twisted way, Schmidt is attempting to help us. Help us understand how to use our power, to help strengthen it and such. The man that first took me wanted to make me into a weapon, a mindless machine that would jump before they finished asking me too. Schmidt's not really attempting to break us, unfortunately for you it's a side-effect."

"But not for you," it was almost an accusation and she met his eyes squarely.

"You can't break what's already broken, luv," she told him firmly, a hint of her British roots shining through despite the fact that she was speaking German.

He swallowed and decided to address another question that had been burning in the back of his mind.

"Have you killed before?" Erik asked.

Sometimes Ana had a look in her eyes as she stared at some of the guards, it reminded Erik horribly of how those same guards stared at his fellow Jews.

"Yes,"

Her answer was simple, her tone matter-of-fact.

"What was it like?" he asked after licking his lips.

"The first time is the worst, you feel sick that you've actually taken another person's life. You get numb and have vivid nightmares for days after," she paused for a moment. "After that first time, it almost gets easier. You still feel terrible but that's a good thing as it means you're still human. If you start to feel nothing at all or worst good after killing someone then you know you're broken deep inside."

"Do you get better?" he asked and he saw her pause as she seemed to think deeply on that.

"I don't know," she admitted.

"How can you tell if someone's broken?" he asked and she stared him.

"You can see it in their eyes," she told him softly.

Erik shouldn't know what that meant but he thought it meant her eyes. Ana's blue eyes were hard and almost angry at times, an anger that almost scared him, and whenever she looked at anyone that wasn't him they were so cold.

"I don't want you to be like me Erik," she admitted as she looked down. "Don't focus on your hate and anger, don't look at everyone like they are Schmidt, I don't want you to paint them with the same brush. I don't want you to be broken like I am, I don't want you to get used to killing that you become detached and used to it. I want you to live, to love, and to heal."

"How can I heal with us stuck here?" he asked almost spitefully.

"We're not going to stay here forever," she was certain, he could see that.

"I want to kill Schmidt," he declared strongly.

"I know," she pierced his blue eyes with her glacier blue ones. "I'm not going to stop you, you need to do that to help yourself, Erik. I wish I had killed that man but I never did. I just want you not to focus on your hate, your anger and your need for revenge, I don't want to see you become like me."

He looked down at his hand and knew he didn't want to be like Ana either.

* * *

_I wasn't naïve enough to think a few words spoken to fifteen-year-old Erik would change his fate, but I could hope my being around him would. _

_I wasn't a hopeful person by nature but hey, miracles could happen right?_

_(God, that was horribly optimistic for me)_

* * *

Erik knew that Ana didn't like water, she had told him that she couldn't swim, and she didn't like the thought of drowning.

Schmidt must have heard about her fear as he decided to see how she recovered from drowning.

It was horrible watching her struggle in the grips of some guards. It was the first time that Erik had seen her show any fear. She would scream under the water, bubbles rushing up to the surface and when she finally stopped struggling and went completely limp they would drag her out.

Her lips were blue and her face was fixed in an expression of fear. She was turned on to her side so the water trailed out of her open mouth and Schmidt would time how long it took her to come back to 'life'.

It was horrible for Erik to watch as the seconds than minutes ticked by before she suddenly gasped and choked out of water in great heaves.

Erik had a feeling that her fear was going to get a lot worse before they got out like Ana was certain they would.

* * *

_My fear of deep water was something that came about, like most fears, from bad experience. It first started when I was young, still in the single digits, and watched Jaws for the first time. Now I can easily see that the shark was fake, but to my young self it was real and I never liked the thought of playing in the sea after that._

_It became worse a few years later when I almost drowned in a swimming in Paris and had to be dragged out of the water by my long hair—it happened because I had attempted to swim without any floats despite the fact that I couldn't swim._

_It wasn't a skill that I learnt as Hope, nor did I learn to swim with the Pokémon—an oversight maybe, but…well some fears are hard to overcome._

_Drowning was one of the worst ways to die. The feeling of water filling your lungs as your brain screams for air, the way you slowly lose consciousness and the will to fight, to live. Waking up after drowning is horrible too, the burning pain in your throat as you choke up water. Horrible._

* * *

1945, the year the war officially ended Ana decided it was time for her and Erik to leave. Schmidt had already left, probably to form his Hellfire Club, and only nervous Nazi guards were still around.

She listened to them muttering and worrying about the Allied Forces certain victory that was coming. Heard the mutters about Hitler attempting to hide and everything, heard the mutters that the Japanese were getting more ruthless now that failure was sure in the future.

She decided that she wasn't going to wait around for the Allied Forces and she really didn't like the looks that they were getting from some of the guards now that Schmidt was gone. It was a simple decision to decide to leave.

"Ana?" Erik blinked as he watched Ana tighten a belt around her waist that a pair of his trousers would stay on her slim waist—slimmer than it should be as Schmidt had decided to see how long Ana could last without food.

She didn't even glance at him as she knotted her hair at the base of her neck before dropping to her knees and reaching under her bed.

"Pack everything you want to keep, we're leaving,"

"Just like that?" Erik hesitantly asked, and she stood with a good-sized knife in her hand—when had she found that?

"Just like that," she confirmed with a smile.

* * *

Ana didn't attack every Nazi on sight as she smuggled them out of Auschwitz, only the ones that attempted to stop them.

She killed them cleanly and quickly, not letting them sound the alarm, and Erik could see what she meant about being broken. There wasn't a shadow of guilt or anything that flashed over her face as she laid the choking—dying—guards on the floor.

There was a blankness to her face that he didn't like and hoped never appeared on his face. He also hoped that he didn't get used to that look on Ana's face.

She glanced back at him as she lifted some of the wired fence up, and her glacier eyes seemed warm as she looked at him and attempted to give him a reassuring smile. Most wouldn't be comforted by a smile on a blood-stained face but strangely, Erik was.

He smiled back before crawling under the fence, turning to hold it up on the other side so Ana could get through and then they were free.

* * *

_**AN: Okay, so I probably over simplified them escaping from Auschwitz but I think that Ana would have wanted to save herself this time instead of letting people save her like they did when she was Hope. **_

_**At the moment I have no idea where to go with the next chapter as my ideas are more focused later in the story when they finally meet Charles and are older. **_

_**Is there anything you, my fans, would like to see in this story?**_


	3. Chapter 3

_I wasn't like Erik, I didn't see any of my family die in front of my eyes and was not haunted by their actual deaths. _

_But I had a family once, twice, and they are gone now. I am haunted by dreams of deaths that they could have had, I am haunted with the thought that I didn't do enough to save them. _

_Perhaps that one of the reasons I'm not standing back again, perhaps that one of the reasons that I'm going to be fighting for them, in their names and memory. I won't let their fates be set, I will not let their future unfurl like it did before. _

_I'm going to screw with canon, say fuck you to Fate and I'm going to badass while doing it._

* * *

A couple sat at an iron table in iron chairs outside of a small café that was bustling with people. The man sat scowling at the others, fiddling with a stray straw that the woman hadn't shoved into her bottle of water. His blue eyes were dark as he glared and one hand would reach up every so often brush at hair that wasn't there—an obvious sign that his dark hair had recently been cut.

The woman on the other hand wasn't fidgeting. Her long slim legs were crossed in a way that made her jeans seem rather tight and raised up slightly to reveal a glint of metal anklets resting just above the worn sneakers she wore. Strands of her hair fell into her face which she absently swiped back with a ring adored hand.

"You're fidgeting," Ana noted, though her gaze didn't lift from her paper and Erik fought back a scowl.

"American dream," he mocked angrily in German, sneering at the distasteful and wary looks directed his way from other café goers sat around them. "What a load of crap."

"Perhaps if you didn't sound so angry when you speak German—"Erik cut her off.

"They don't like me or trust me when I speak English," he hissed at her, she calmly looked up at him and Erik was struck with how much she had changed in the years since they left Europe.

She was surprisingly tall considering how tiny she was as a fifteen year old though she was still a head shorter than him as he was rather lanky. Her face was sharper though no longer gaunt—there was no one to limit her food intake to see how her power reacted—and she kept her long hair, almost caramel coloured now, twisted in a knot at the back of her neck.

She still didn't wear dresses or skirts, she always wore jeans and flats—easier to run in and fight in she said. She always had thick metal bracelets around her wrists and a metal belt to go with her anklets—'just in case you need me quickly or something like that'—so he could move her through his power.

"People do not trust those with a German accent," she ignored Erik irritate 'I'm from Poland' and continued. "It is still too soon after the war."

"You don't have any problems," he accused almost childishly.

She barred her teeth in a mocking grin.

"That's because I'm bloody British, luv," she told him almost smugly and laying on her accent before her attention returned to her paper.

"What's so important in that?" he asked after a moment, Ana wasn't one to read the paper but she had been reading this one quite intently so he was curious as to what had caught her attention.

"This," she turned the paper towards him and tapped at one particular article with one slender finger and he peered down at it.

_**Fifteen-year-old Alexander Summers arrested for bombing a shop and injuring several people with the blast. **_

"So?" he asked as he looked up at her and she rolled her eyes.

"He's like us," she told him almost impatiently.

"Again, so?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

"We're going to take him with us," she told him just as he took a sip of his drink and he choked.

"What?" he gaped at her as she smoothly got to her feet in one movement.

"I'll see you at the hotel later," she smiled and waved mockingly towards him before she left.

"Ana!" he called at her retreating back though she didn't turn back. "Damn that woman."

* * *

_My third life gave me a lightness that I hadn't had since my first life, made life easier to handle no matter what the hell was thrown in my path and helped me with my drive to change things._

_Starting with Alex Summers, uncle of Scott Summers. _

'_How was she getting him out of jail?' you ask. Easy, SHIELD knew all about people in shady business and I knew of a few people that could help be draft up a few papers that could get him released into my care—luckily I had decided to flick through all the old contacts one day when I was bored, huh?_

* * *

Alex tilted his head back and frowned at the sound of footsteps heading towards his cell. He didn't have many visitors, his brother had started his own family and didn't know how to cope with Alex's 'bombing' incident especially since there was no signs of an actual bomb from the wreckage though no mention of that in the official story.

"Are you sure you want him?" he heard a muffled male voice ask from behind his cell-door.

"Positive," a slightly high though soft female voice responded.

"Really? Because he's the only one who likes solitude,"

"I'm sure will get along fine then," she said firmly before the sound of the door unlocking made him sit up as it swung open and revealed a young woman standing next to one of his guards.

"Hello," he was surprised that she was British. "I'm Ana, and I'm here to take you with me."

* * *

Ana's first thought of Alex Summers? He had the same brooding look as Scott. He was also a stubborn pain in the ass.

"No," Alex repeated firmly and slowly like she was both deaf and dumb as he glared at the closed door of his cell.

She had known he was going to be difficult the moment he opened his mouth and had quickly asked for some time alone to talk some sense into him.

"You think you're going to keep everyone safe? Staying locked up in here?" she almost smirked at his look of surprise. "You have a power that you don't know how to control."

"How do you know that?" he asked wearily, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"I have a power too," she answered as she lifted her hand and placed it on his chest. "But I can control it, unlike you. Because I have control."

She was attempting to make him angry for some reason and it was starting to work.

"You have no control, you don't know how to control your power, you are a danger to your family and everyone around you," she told him bluntly.

He glared at her as he felt his chest heat up and she smiled as she pulled her hand back. It was blistered and burnt, and his anger disappeared at the sight of what he had done to her. Oh god, he had hurt her and he didn't mean too, he hadn't even realised that his power was acting up.

She didn't seem worried and continued to smile as her hand began to heal. Blisters and burns disappeared into pink new skin that faded into her normal pale skin.

"I want to help you," she told him. "You can't kill me if you lose control. People with powers like yours have to gain control, have to harness it or they will harm everyone around them by accident. Will you accept my help?"

He thought a moment, staring at her freshly healed hand.

"Yes,"

* * *

_Alex was around twenty-seven when he joined Division X and had spent twelve-years locked up in a cell or part of the army. He had been angry, he had hated himself and his power, and felt like a monster._

_It was something that he shouldn't have had to deal with, something that I wasn't going to let him feel because I knew those feelings. They only made it harder to control powers like his. _

_I didn't know if I was going to be completely successful with this but I wanted to help him, help others like him. _

_(Fuck, I was turning into a do-gooder that wants to help everyone. Yuck. Though Xavier would be so proud.)_

* * *

Alex stared at Ana, almost her whole body was burnt and blistered though it was healing, and felt sick. He had done that to her, he had hurt her because he couldn't control his power. Erik could control his power and didn't have to worry about hurting her accidently like Alex did.

Ana sighed and slapped him on the back of the head.

"Again," she told him nodding towards the targets. "Just this time let me stand behind you before you fire off, okay?"

"Sorry," he winced as she slapped him again, annoyance clear on her newly healed face.

"Shut up and do as I say," she told him and he did, feeling her gaze watch him harness the power in his chest—she had started with him using his chest as that's where most of the power went to automatically—before it fired and missed the centre target though killed the one on the right.

Erik snickered from where he was perched on a fallen log watching them, he was meant to be reading but no one was fooled, and Alex gritted his teeth. They had to train way out in the forest and Erik really didn't have to be with them, but he always came. Every single damn time.

"Ignore him," she told him. "I do, especially when he's being annoying."

"Which is always," Alex muttered lowly and caught the smirk on her face told him that she had heard his muttered words and most likely agreed with him.

"Again," she told him as she rested her hands on his shoulders. "Focus."

So Alex focused again, just as she told him.

* * *

_Alex's struggles with powers distracted Erik mostly, I knew that his hunt for Schmidt would start soon enough._

_It was already beginning, a month after we had returned to Europe and Alex had been training for two months. Erik slipped out of the hotel while I was in the shower and Alex was asleep—he sprawled by the way—and when he came back, in the early hours in the morning, he came with the smell of blood and a case filled with gold bars—Nazi gold bars._

* * *

Erik slowly eased the door open and winced at the slight squeak of the hinges though he wasn't that worried as Ana slept deeper than the dead and nothing could rise Alex apart from Ana after a day of training his powers or Ana 'training' him to fight—Alex thought, and Erik happened to agree with him, that part of his training was Ana's way to get back at him from frying her and sending her flying when he managed to form actual discs and didn't just fry her with plasma beams.

Of course Erik was counting on her being asleep and perhaps she would have been if she didn't clean and count her knives every night before bed—Natasha and Clint had instilled that into her—and had noticed that one was missing—her favourite by the way.

Without that, perhaps she wouldn't have concerned herself with where he had went off to as he was a grown man and could take care of himself.

So when Erik shut the door and turned, he had to refrain from jumping a bright glacier eyes met his sternly from where she was perched on the end of Alex's bed, one of his feet had freed itself from the covers and was thrown carelessly over her lap though she didn't seem to mind.

(Erik found it strange how gentle she could be with Alex and it wasn't something she practiced—she had once snorted at him when he suggested a gentle approach in getting information and had swaggered into the shady bar and walked out an hour later with new blood stains on her sneakers and the needed information for the little hunting trip after another Nazi—but she was rather gentle with Alex, something that he somewhat envied as Ana had stopped being gentle the moment he stopped crying for his mother at night)

"I would ask who the lucky girl was," she began, her voice too calm for comfort. "But I doubt you have a kinky blood sex thing going on and thus wouldn't need one of my knives if it was a girl. Where were you?"

Erik couldn't help going red around the ears when she bluntly spoke about sex kinks—truly she had no shame.

"I was out," he said lamely, and almost winced as she snorted completely unimpressed.

"I can see that," she stared at him with piercing eyes. "What I want to know is what you were doing while you were _out_."

He held out a case and she just narrowed her eyes at him.

"I have gold," he offered and Ana just rolled her eyes. "I didn't do anything that you wouldn't."

"That leaves a lot for you to do," she pointed out. "Do you still feel bad?"

Erik immediately knew what she was asking about.

"Yes," he walked over and rested the case on the single table in the corner of the room and Ana walked over, and quickly removed the knife from where he had stuck it between his jeans and belt.

She made a disapproving noise at the blood-stain blade as she turned to walk to the bathroom so that she could clean it properly as Erik hadn't really bothered too.


	4. Chapter 4

It was appalling how many Nazi escaped justice, but it gave them a way to make money. Ana, Erik and now Alex was Nazi hunters. They did bring in a fair number of Nazis alive so governments over looked the ones that they brought in dead—better a dead Nazi than another Hitler was the common thought—and they were recognised as Nazi hunters and thus giving more lee-way than if they were just vigilantes after Nazis.

They also made a tidy sum when taking the gold that they sometimes stock-piled.

Unfortunately some bankers tended to be annoying when they went to exchange their gold for actual money, and some were even more annoying when they were just trying to get some information.

Ana lazily kicked her legs over the side of the chair so she was sat side-ways in it. The banker manager didn't know if he should shot her a look or keep his gaze on Erik—he should keep his gaze on Erik as he had gained a few cruel traits over the years and didn't like when some people played dumb.

Any other person would be worried that they had helped culture Erik's cruelty if they were like her, but she knew he could have, and would have, become cruel without her presence and she was actually the one that told him to stop if he went to over bored—which was something very hypocritical of her as she often went too far.

"Do you know our terms, sir?" the manger asked Erik.

"And you should know ours," Erik reached out for one of the pictures, giving it a curious once-over before he lifted his head to smile at the banker. "This gold is what remains of my people. Melted from the possession, torn from their teeth. This is blood money."

Ana shifted slightly, a half-smile on her face when the man glanced at her nervously.

"And you're going to help us find the bastards responsible for it," Erik told him simply.

She wasn't surprised when the man reached for a panic button, it was predictable that he would attempt something like that. You didn't need to be a genius or have real fore-knowledge if you watch people enough. Most were horribly predictable really.

Erik wagged his finger at the man like a disapproving parent as he used the metal in the man's watch to stop him from touching the button.

She let out a little laugh as Erik made the banker hit himself as Erik stood smoothly.

"Don't push that alarm," Erik told him. "I want Schmidt. Klaus Schmidt. You will tell me where he is."

"Our clients don't provide addresses, we're not that—"

"Sort of bank?" Erik finished as he reached out with his power. "Metal fillings, huh?" The man cried out in pain, hand moving to his mouth as if that could stop Erik. "Not gold? Worried someone might steal them?"

The man's gaze darted around Erik and stared pleadingly at her. She smiled almost happily at him and withdrew a knife from around her ankle and began playing with it.

"Trust me, you got the better option," she told him simply as his eyes went impossibly wide.

Feeling almost playful, she flicked her tongue over the sharp edge of her knife, letting it catch and bleed for a brief moment before it healed seamlessly.

"Argentina! Schmidt is in Argentina! Villa Gesell! Please!"

For a brief moment it looked like Erik wasn't going to stop but he did when one of the metal fillings came out and landed easily in his hand.

It looked like Erik was just going to turn away.

"Erik," Ana prompted and Erik almost sighed.

"Thank you," he said without a hint of real sincerity. "I would love to kill you."

Erik reached out with one of his hands and Ana easily got to her feet and put her hand in his as they began to walk away.

"So mark my words, if you warn anyone I'm coming…" he paused and smiled at him as they stopped at the door. "I will find you."

"And this time I will play with you," Ana promised.

* * *

_I would explain what happened when we got to there but I'm sure you already knew that. So perhaps I should start off again in Florida, in the great USA._

* * *

Ana grimaced as she stared at the dark waters and Erik almost smiled at her fear because some things never truly changed.

Alex reached out and she slid her hand into his and he helped her into the boat that they were burrowing.

"I guess I'm on my own?" Erik asked as he zipped up his wet-suit.

"You know I can't swim," she told him as she settled behind the wheel of the boat and began steering away from the dock and closer towards the boat that they knew Schmidt was on.

"You also get sea-sick the moment you step on to a boat and yet that doesn't stop you driving a one," Erik countered as he sat on the edge of the boat.

"The things I suffer for you," she lamented and smiled at his small chuckle though it soon died as a nervous tension filled him as he stared towards where Schmidt's boat was.

"Be careful," she told him and he gave a little salute as he let himself fall backwards into the waters below.

"Is this a good idea?" Alex asked almost nervously as he tried to see through the dark at Erik.

"Careful, you almost sound if you care about him," she teased but became serious soon after. "No, but he needs to do this."

Alex shot her a look before turning to face where Schmidt's ship was.

* * *

Charles was actually surprised that a boat was already speeding towards them, even more surprised that it wasn't one of the CIA boats but apparently Erik's friends considering how he didn't attempt to fight Charles off again and instead reached up as the boat pulled to a stop beside them.

A woman reached out, a relieved 'Erik' slipping past her lips as they clasped forearms and she hurled him up and into the boat.

She wasn't as tall as Erik, taller than Raven and near to Charles' own height. Her long hair had been pulled back in a simple ponytail and strands framed her pretty defined features, her hair an odd caramel colour.

A blonde man was the one who helped him up, board-shoulder with short hair and almost stormy blue eyes. He easily pulled Charles up and into the boat and took a step back away from him, almost flanking the woman, and scowling at him wearily.

A brief brush at his surface thoughts told Charles that the man, an Alex Summers, didn't trust Charles and also wondered how he had gotten Erik to stop almost killing himself.

Charles may have gone further if the woman hadn't turned to him and handed him a towel. Glacier blue clashed with pale sky blue and Charles couldn't stop himself for looking.

* * *

"_I'm sorry for bringing up bad-memories," a bald older version of what he realised with a start was himself spoke._

* * *

_The sprawling grounds of Xavier manor was filled with children, mutants, and it was beautiful. It was a school, a safe haven for all their kind._

* * *

_A gruff man stood next to his older self as they watched the woman and others training their powers against simulated enemies and she glanced up with a smile and the man, Logan, returned it._

* * *

"_You're one of us," Logan told her simply and he could feel her yearning, how she wished it was true, how she wished she was one of them and thus never had to leave them but that wasn't her fate._

"_No I'm not," she said sadly as she pressed a kiss to his rough cheek, eyes wet as she took her bags and knew she was walking away from the best things that had happened to her in years._

* * *

_A young girl stared at her with scared bright green eyes as she huddled behind the form of a young boy and her heart clenched. They were too young to know such fear, too young to be in this hell hole. _

_She was perhaps a bit too brutal when she killed one of their guards in front of them, but she doesn't regret it and wouldn't ever as hesitate hands slid trustingly in her own and she sworn she would keep them safe._

* * *

_She was dying, laying in the arms of one of her friends, and all she could think of was that at least she was home. __**Professor, if you can hear me, please take care of them, **__was her final thoughts as she drifted._

* * *

"Stop," it was a command, an order and Charles complied without question as he pulled back from her mind, her impossible memories and his gaze stayed fixed on her face.

She hadn't shouted, hadn't lashed out in anger like he almost expected her too. She stood in front of him, towel still outstretched for him, defiant and proud despite the bitter tears trailing down her face and she met his eyes squarely, without fear and without the respect that tinted her memories of his older self.

This woman—Hope, _Ana_—was broken in a way that Charles had never seen before and yet she wore the broken pieces of her heart proudly on her sleeve as a badge so everyone could see she had survived Hell twice and hadn't succumbed.

This woman with her fierce—duo-coloured eyes, _glacier eyes_—eyes looked at him, the young face of a man that she once respected and loved dearly and almost felt nothing because he wasn't the same man she had once known and was simply a stranger.

This woman had come to terms with seeing familiar strangers and yet didn't back away from the heart-break it would surely cause her.

This woman was impossible, everything he knew told him what she apparently went through couldn't be real but the evidence was in her memories.

"Stay out of my head," her voice was hard yet even. "You will not like what you find."

This woman was different from the woman in her memories, the woman that his other self-had seemingly known well. She was less raging, her anger more icy and controlled. This was a woman that had hardened herself against her past—both pasts—and was a survivor, a woman that was going to do anything in her power to keep the dark fates she knew would befall on the people she had loved fiercely and she would save them from it as best she could despite the fact that _they _weren't the people she loved.

"I'm sorry for bringing up bad-memories," he echoed his other—future, past—self and she glared at him, eyes icy but he could almost see part of her recoil, at seeing a familiar stranger speak those words to her again.

"Ana?" Erik asked worriedly as he rested his hand on one of her slender shoulders as Charles took the towel from her hand.

Alex crowded closer to Ana, eyes burning into Charles' face as his distrust grew.

"I'm fine," Ana dismissed though neither of the men were fooled. "We've just come to an understanding."

Charles reached up to rub at his hair fiercely and knew what she meant. If he talked about what he had seen in her head, she would hurt him badly—not enough to kill him as she wanted to see him grow into the man she had once known—and if he kept his mouth shut, then she would work with him. Help him learn from his mistakes before it could happen perhaps?

She hadn't let him see many of her memories, she had been consciously attempting not to think about them so he wouldn't know but she had lost control the moment she met his gaze, and only let him briefly glimpse at some of them, a short glimpse into the future and her past.

He wouldn't speak a word of what he saw in those brief moments in her mind, despite just meeting her and getting a glimpse in her mind, he knew he could trust her and that she was a good person underneath it all.

And so was the start of an uneasy friendship that would grow in strength and comfort as the years past and they both grew older and matured.


	5. Chapter 5

_Most people fear Death, they fear being forgotten and fading away into dim memories. They are afraid of the endless darkness that was meant to be Death._

_Me? I craved for that type of death, for endless darkness and nothingness. _

_So far, I've officially died three times. Once by accident, once in defence of a friend and the last was old age. None of them were painless._

_Each time I drifted into the darkness, I would feel a spark of relief that would turn into crushing disappointment when new breathe came into new lungs and another life would begin._

_New world, new life, new face, new body, new abilities. An endless circle. _

_Sometimes when I can't fall into Morpheus' sweet embrace, I wonder if I'm even human any more. Other times I wonder if any of this is actually real and sometimes I wonder if I didn't die when that car hit me and just fell into a deep coma._

_Was the all in my head? Just the wild imagination of a rather childish young adult, who spent too much time reading stories and playing games because she was too sick to really do anything else with her sorry life, trapped in her own mind?_

_If so, I have one seriously fucked-up mind and I most really hate myself._

* * *

Raven almost sighed as she felt Charles' leg jump up and down in impatience as they drove to their new 'home'—read cage-with their new 'friends'—read fellow mutants—being followed by a baby blue BMW bug.

He had been acting oddly since he came back from his little swim with three others just like them.

She had been both surprised and relieved that she was finally not the only girl, but didn't have a real chance to introduce herself as the caramel haired woman had smiled weakly once when Charles gestured between them with short intros of their names before her already pale face paled to a colour that Raven was half-sure only corpses should be able to have and rushed to the side of the boat as she was violently sick.

The blonde man with her, Alex, had snickered slightly before he went to rub a less then sympathetic hand on her hunched back as the brunette, Erik, explained that Ana got horribly sea-sick and that he was honestly surprised that she hadn't been sick before. Ana had gestured rather rudely towards him after that comment in between harsh heaves.

Raven was broken from her thoughts as their car came to a stop and she followed Charles as he almost leapt from the car, blue eyes already searching for Ana.

Ana rolled her eyes at Charles before turning to one of the agents that was heading towards her car.

"Put a scratch on my car, and I'll give you one back," she told him seriously as she handed over the keys.

The agent obviously didn't believe her but Ana didn't seem to mind and only smiled as the agent drove her car off to be parked.

Raven glanced up at Charles and noticed he was frowning at Ana, the caramel-haired woman glanced at him with an innocent look that fooled no one.

Raven knew things were going to get more interesting, as they walked into their new home.

* * *

"Ana," Charles' voice was stern as the woman attempted to ignore the agent holding a box for weapons and she glared at the brunette mind-reader.

He just stared sternly at her with his arms crossed. Ana could almost feel Erik and Alex's smirks.

She glanced around and realised that the agents were beginning to stare at her in suspicion and gave a big sigh.

Raven's eyebrows raised as the first things that Ana placed in the box—already containing two knives from Erik and Alex—was a lighter and a knuckle duster before she removed the dark leather jacket that she had been wearing to reveal a holster with a small gun fixed to the small of her back and a vest almost completely covered in shiny silver blades that she took off with a few grumbles.

Raven glanced at the agents and noticed some of their jaws had dropped already and Ana wasn't even done. She removed her metal belt, it was actually very long and the metal had been sharpened so it could be used as a weapon, before she rolled up her jeans and removed more knives, another small gun and a small stick of explosives from her ankles and calves.

Raven was impressed with all the weapons that Ana had hidden on herself, though she wondered why the older woman needed them, but as she glanced at Charles, she realised that Ana hadn't given up all her weapons.

"You're no fun," Ana told Charles as she reached up for the silver hair-ornament that had been holding her hair up—it was actually another knife—and putting that in the basket before removing the heels that Ana must have put on before she got out of her car and placed them on top.

The heels were rather thick and Raven didn't know how that counted as a weapon but Charles relaxed the moment she stepped away from her heels.

"Where did you even get things like that?" Charles asked, his voice raised with incredibly.

"I know people," Ana shrugged easily though it had been hard to find someone to make those shoes with knives concealed in her heels. "You know when I asked you to stop reading my mind, I was almost sure you would have been gentlemen-enough to stop."

"Your mind is fascinating," Charles told her as they began to follow CIA agent—who had never introduced himself.

"If that's your way of flirting," Ana began, her arm linking with Alex's—Raven noticed that he just rolled his eyes, obviously used to Ana randomly linking arms with him. "I have to say despite the baby blues you're sporting and the fact you speak like a true English man, you're just not my type. I would break you after one night."

Raven had to muffle a laugh as Charles spluttered, though Alex didn't bother, and Erik smirked as Charles' face turned red.

Raven decided that she liked Ana, the older woman was bold, blunt and could make her brother speechless—something that Raven thought was impossible.

* * *

_Xavier had been my mentor, he had been a man that I had respected and cared for. A man that opened his home for me and a man that kept my secrets. _

_Charles was a young man who was like a child in a candy store as he fond and interacted with other mutants. He was a young man, someone that hadn't had to cope with his best friend choosing a different—darker path—a man that didn't have to cope with his sudden loss his legs that some could say was either because of the man he called his friend or the woman that he cared for. This was a man that hadn't had students, hadn't watched them being drafted into a war that they most likely wouldn't come back from, he hadn't had to deal with Trask hunting down and experimenting on his students, his friends, on the sly. _

_Charles was young, naïve in a way that Xavier hadn't been, and had a causal arrogance to him that Xavier never had. He didn't foresee the suffering that other, future, mutants would go through for his dream of peace—a dream that I had always found rather naïve, even when it was Xavier's dream. _

_I didn't automatically respect this man because of the man he could one day become. This Charles Xavier was a stranger, a rude stranger that wouldn't stay out of my head._

* * *

The loud smack echoed and brought Raven's attention from Hank to stare at where Alex, Ana and Erik had been standing only to see the blonde clutching his head in pain. Ana grimaced lightly as she shook her hand.

"What was that for?" Alex almost whined as he glanced up at the woman through his fingers.

"Don't say it," she warned sternly.

"I didn't say anything," Alex protested as he straightened up and glared at her.

"You were thinking it," she accused without missing a beat.

"You're not the mind-reader so you can't know that," Alex almost looked smug and Ana narrowed her glacier eyes.

"I've raised you since you were fifteen, I know you," she remarked drily, her voice as dry as the Sahara and Raven realised that both Alex and Ana shared the same dry tone.

"Like you weren't thinking it too," Alex argued and she raised her hand and Alex threw his hands up in surrender and muttered about abuse with an almost fond tone.

Raven glanced at Hank as he landed nimbly on his feet, his ears red and he shuffled awkwardly to his discarded shoes and knew that he understood that Alex was going to make a remark, probably something that would embarrass or hurt Hank, before Ana stopped him in her not-so subtle way.

Raven glared at the blonde, finally she had met someone that would truly understand what she went through, met a guy that knew she was mutant and was one too. A guy that obviously liked her and she found she liked him already too. She wasn't going to let the blonde bully him.

Hank was all thumbs as he attempted to tie his shoes, his head ducked down and focused solely on his task. He should have known that he still wouldn't be accepted even with his own kind.

Slender hands gently slapped his hands way, showing none of the force that had almost dropped Alex to his knees with one slap, and helped tie his shoes—it wasn't the neatest bow and the knot was odd, but it was nice of her.

She glanced up after nodding approvingly at her tying skills—something that wasn't that great, even she would admit—and her pale eyes met his dark blue ones.

"Alex can be a jerk sometimes," she told him, her voice not even lowered so everyone could hear. "Don't let him get to you, he doesn't often mean it. Do you?"

Her question was directed at Alex, who shifted under everyone's attention.

"I didn't say anything," he attempted to argue which made Ana scowl at him, Alex rolled his eyes and sighed as he shoved his hands deep into his pockets. "I'm sorry, I'm a jerk." Though he attempted to lower his voice into mumble everyone heard. "Even when I don't say anything."

Ana didn't say anything, her eyes narrowed the slightest bit more at Alex before she smiled at Hank and stood up in one motion.

* * *

_I was bullied as a child—shocker right?—and I guess that was why I am such a bitch at times. I can't blame Duerr for everything, can I?_

_That was probably one of the reasons I connected so well with mutants before, because I knew what it was like to be an outcast even before the fuckery that was Doctor Duerr. _

_I wasn't going to let Alex make Hank feel any worse about himself. Hank already had enough self-loathing to make it rain constantly around him—I could almost actually feel the rain—and all because his feet were a little odd._

_I didn't like bullies, Alex wasn't a bully but he was a jerk at times. Something neither Erik nor myself helped with because I could be a cruel bitch and Erik could be a cruel bastard and we didn't ever bother to hide that from Alex. Still, I wasn't going to let Alex bring Hank down._

_Hank was basically a kid, despite being in his twenties, and had grown up wanting to be normal. I never understood that want, even when I was bullied for being different I didn't care or change because I didn't want to be normal. Normal didn't even really exist, you could be average but never normal. _

_Normal was boring, over-rated. I liked being different, being odd and such._

* * *

"You're beautiful,"

Raven flinched as she turned around, she hadn't even heard Ana enter their shared room. Golden eyes searched her face, looking for signs that the older woman was mocking her but there was none which was impossible.

"I—"Ana cut her off as she reached out with her hands and compared their hands.

Both had slender hands, though Ana's seemed bigger because of her long fingers, Raven's was a deep blue and Ana's was a pale normal shade.

"I wish I was blue," Ana muttered as she seemed to admire Raven's hand. "It's one of my favourite colours."

"You don't," Raven was almost surprised with how harsh her voice was though Ana merely glanced up, calmly, waiting. "You would be a freak, everyone would hate you, you're lucky that you're normal."

"You're not a freak," Ana's voice was firm as she met Raven's eyes. "There is no such thing as normal, luv. It's just a pretty idea that makes people feel worse when they are different." She let go of her hand and made her way to her bed. "And I don't care about people, what they think, what they say or feel about me."

Raven just stared as Ana settled on her bed, cleaning her knives—newly returned to her—and other weapons and could honestly see that Ana wasn't lying.

Ana wouldn't have cared if her mutation was something that marked her as physically different, wouldn't have cared if people would look at her and thought her a freak because Ana didn't care about people—that wasn't completely true, she cared about Erik and Alex, cared already about her and Hank, and despite the weird tension between her and Charles, Raven was sure she cared about Charles too—and Raven didn't know what to make of that.


	6. Chapter 6

Hank hadn't really been aware of where his feet was taking him until the casual crunch of potato chips made him glance up from his notebook—already filled with theories for a cure—and he realised he was in the rec room.

It was newly set up for the mutants, pin-ball tucked in the corner, juke-box filled with records in another, chairs and couches surrounded a single coffee table and space had been made for a pool table that Ana insisted they had—he would always remember how her pale hand had smoothed over the sides of it, her pale eyes dark with remembrance and a hint of longing, when it had first been set up—and a bar loaded with drinks and snacks.

Raven had dragged one of the chairs close to one of the large windows, the one facing out into the courtyard with the golden statue, and she was engrossed with what was happening outside.

He could understand why she was so absorbed.

On the grass, the short green blades curling around bare-feet, were Alex and Ana. They were both wearing shorts, Ana's shorts shorter than anything Hank had ever seen on a woman before, and in vests.

Alex was focused, face almost in a scowl as he warily kept his gaze on Ana. Alex was mostly still, but Ana wasn't. She kept on the balls of her feet, crouched almost as she kept feigning about going left or right, a smirk curling her lips when Alex automatically moved to block her when she hardly moved from her spot.

Hank knew that at any moment Ana would move, striking as fast as a cobra, and the spar would be on—it would be brutal, bloody and fast.

He had been horrified the first time he had witnessed it. Ana had come from behind Alex and had been attempting to straggle him when he slammed his head back into her face and her nose seemed to burst in a shower of blood.

Hank had been striding forward—completely unsure what he was going to do, but knowing he was going to stop them fighting—when Erik stopped him, his power had gripped his belt buckle and Hank had almost completely lost his footing from the sudden grip that forced his middle to stop while his feet attempted to keep going. Erik had smirked at him before turning back to the fight and that was the first time Hank saw what Ana's power was.

She had skipped back, uncaring of the blood on her face and staining her top, and he watched as her smashed and crocked nose straightened and healed as she absently wiped the blood away with a quick swipe of the back of her hand. It looked like it had never been broken, or it would have looked like that if there wasn't the blood still streaking her pale skin and staining her top.

Ana's bland 'I heal fast' hadn't prepared him for how fast her power worked or the skill, Hank had strode out there after the spar finished, and Erik let him go, to cup Ana's face. She let him, an annoyed look of resignation on her slim face, study her nose, poke at it and feel for any imperfects, there was none.

The sight of Ana lashing out—she always lead with her left hand even though she was right handed—broke him out of his thoughts and he watched as the spar continued on.

* * *

_My first life's memories were dim, faded like words on the pages of a well-loved book that had been exposed to too much sun. I remembered few things._

_Mum was always there, Dad was dead, Brother was annoying, Nephew was a brat, dogs were great and friends played pool. _

_I had never had the time for pool in my second life and well my third, I don't think they even had pool. _

_But here and now I had a pool table and I was gaining friends, again._

* * *

"You make an adorable lab-rat," Erik smiled at Charles as he leaned against the metal rails and part of Ana agreed with him.

The ridiculous helmet with various wires dwarfed his head and was probably messing up his beloved hair. There was almost a pout on his face and it hit Ana hard how young Charles was, a young man in early thirties.

God, she felt so old compared to them sometimes.

"Are you sure I can't shave your hair?" Hank asked, his voice wholly innocent as was his question.

"Don't touch my hair," Charles voice was defensive and his hands almost reached up to hold his thick locks protectively.

"Don't worry Hank," she called out with a smirk, perched on the rail next to Erik and Alex. "He'll go bald in a few decades and you can see if it makes a difference then."

Charles glared at her, his face moody at the reminder that he would one day be bald.

"Some women like bald-guys," Alex told Charles as if that would make him feel better, a smirk on the blonde's face told Charles that it wasn't meant to make him feel better.

Sometimes Charles wondered what Alex would have been like without Ana inferring, but he didn't dwell on that thought. Ana had recused him from a life of self-hatred, fear and confusion and helped him.

"Right?" Hank asked and Charles nodded tightly, hands gripping the rails as the machine whirled to life and Charles' mind expanded.

He choked out a laugh, it was amazing. He could feel everyone, could easily reach out for their minds but he had to be focused so he could find his fellow mutants. And he was focused, mostly, but part of him was focused on Ana, whose mind was purposely clouded, and he was reminded how curious he was.

Of who she was, who Hope had been, what the future was like and why she was so determined to change things. Who was Xavier that held such respect? Who was the man, Logan, and what did he mean to her? What did she go through to make her so angry—and she was angry, coldly angry—and what had hurt her so?

His power was being amplified, his power stronger than ever had been before and responded to his sub-conscious mind as much as his conscious. So as his conscious mind searched for other mutants, his sub-conscious went to state his curiosity.

* * *

Xavier had been a curious man, a man that was always reaching for more knowledge. Part of it came from being purely him, but Ana was sure that the other part came from his power.

It had been his curiosity that had made him delve into her mind when he first met her as Hope. He had been like in his eighties, had years to refine his skill and yet had trigger all her memories in a way that made her scream out her pain, her rage, her grief, to the world. After that, he never went further than her surface thoughts because he respected her and trusted her.

Charles wasn't Xavier, not yet anyway, he was curious and hadn't ever met someone that could feel him in their head if he didn't want them too, that reacted badly to their own memories. Charles hadn't seen enough to trust her, like Xavier once had, and he knew she was hiding something but didn't know what and that made him suspicious. Charles had never met someone like Ana before and so Ana shouldn't have been that surprised by the sudden attack.

And it was an attack in her mind.

One moment she was watching Hank, his face lit up as he exclaimed that it was working, and the next she was gone.

Pain, agony, suffering. She vaguely heard someone screaming, it would be later that she would realise it was her. A phantom blow to her side sent her tumbling backwards though she was too far gone to realise how really bad that was.

* * *

"_She's still alive,"_

"_Was she the cause of the signal?"_

"_Has to be,"_

"_We'll take her back then."_

* * *

Those damn voices, bland and uncaring as she laid there broken and most likely bleeding. Those horrible voices belonging to faceless men that talked about her like she was nothing, like her suffering was nothing. She hated them, hated them.

* * *

_She couldn't feel her left arm, couldn't feel the rough materiel of the bed under her arm, and she swallowed thickly, harshly, and turned her wary gaze on to her left arm—which still had to be there as she had felt it move, she had moved it—and bit back a scream, a shrill horrified and panicked scream, and instead let out a string of curses as the gleaming silver arm winked back at her in the dim light. _

_That decision, not to scream, seemed small at the time but it was the start of her new life. A life were weakness couldn't be shown._

* * *

_She gripped the metal cup in her hands, her side leaning against the glass that separated her from Wanda, and could feel the slightest tremble in her legs—Mum said she had always been freakily aware of her body—and she couldn't believe this was real, this couldn't be real, she couldn't be in a fuckin' movie verse._

_That was the things of fantasy, of fan-fiction and other such stuff. Shit like this didn't, shouldn't, couldn't, happen in real damn life._

* * *

_She couldn't remember her name, couldn't remember the way her mother said it or her friends. Every time she thought for her name it came up blank, her grasp empty and wanting. She had no name, she was no one and worse, she was stuck in the hands of bloody Hydra. _

_Hope was the name she came up with after time dwelling at the blank spot that was her name. It wasn't her name but it had meaning. She knew from her reading that she needed to hold on to hope, any type of hope, or she would be completely ruined by whatever they decided to do to her._

* * *

_She yelled, screamed through a locked jaw as her limbs seized and her body went rigid as she fell. Her eyes were rolling, her head and her body was shaking as bolts of electric surged through her mercilessly and she could hear Wanda's voice dimly in the back of her head when she had told her not to fight and she had fought anyway._

* * *

_The metal was cool against her bare skin and honestly didn't care about her being nude, shame died quickly here. It was almost sickening how comfortable she could feel laid out like a corpse of Duerr's table, metal keeping her fixed in place, as she waited for the next round of torture._

* * *

"_Mum," she croaked as she hazily peered at the woman that only she could see, Mum was staring at her with teary pale eyes—Mum didn't cry often though she disagreed whenever she had voiced that so Hope knew she must have been a horrible sight to look at but she didn't care because finally, finally, she was there. "Mum, mummy, MUM!"_

_None of the prisoners that watched as she cried and reached for a woman, her own mother, that wasn't there ever mocked her, they said nothing about the pained sobs that almost broke her back with force when she reached out hopelessly. Most of them remembered having visions of their own mothers, of reaching out in their hallucinations, and all agreed that mothers were off-limits._

* * *

"_Never trust your opponent," Bucky taught her, he also taught her that nearly everyone was her opponent in some way or form and thus she should always stay on her guard and never trust easily. That was fine, her naïve trust of a girl that had never felt true pain in her life but had thought she had was gone, broken and burnt by poison._

* * *

_Simon was still screaming, Viktor was still jeering, and she just read. She wouldn't watch, wouldn't watch as he killed himself and didn't glance over when he sobbed in relief or when his body flopped lifeless on the ground._

_Disgust twisted in her stomach and she understood Pietro's contempt, Bucky's disapproval, because what Simon was a doing was wrong and he was a coward to not even face on session with Duerr._

* * *

_She stared at her reflection, stared at the mess of scars the circled around her shoulder and under her arm and with her hand she reached out and traced various places where scars should be. There should be track marks all up her right arm, she should look like a junkie because of all the poison and crap that Duerr had pumped her with. _

_Little scars should litter her abdomen, a thick and deep scar should be across her neck, her torso should have the scars of the repeated Y-cuts she had been through, and a burn from a gun muzzle should be in the middle of her forehead. _

_A scar should be above her heart where that damn guard attempted to kill her or at least stop her. Circular holes over and around her knees where bullets and spikes had been put through them. But she healed too fast now for any scars to linger, to show the world what the hell she lived through._

* * *

_Coulson pitied her, Hope knew. She could see it in his eyes, she had gotten good at reading people's eyes, but he didn't let that pity reflect in most of his actions. He was quite protective of her though, and she wasn't sure if that was pity because of she went through or respect because of what she went through. Who knew with someone like Phil Coulson?_

* * *

_The bedroom actually looked like a bedroom and not a cell, which was another plus in favour of Xavier's and she wished she had been a mutant in her second life because she knew she would have a better life, perhaps actually fully heal, if she could stay at Xavier's. But she wasn't and life wasn't fair._

* * *

_Her hand was wrapped tightly around Logan's throat as she woke mid-thrash and she panted, sweat sticking her clothes to her flushed skin, and stared up at him as he stared almost calmly back like she wasn't moments away from crushing his throat. _

_Slowly as she calmed down, she let go and Logan said nothing as he sat next to her. They were silent as they rested against her headboard, her wrapped in her covers with him sitting over them. They didn't need to speak because they knew the other understood. _

_Days later she would sneak into his room and he would wake up mid-thrash with his claws buried in her chest and they would still say nothing as they repeated what happened in her room. Just the other being there, understanding, was enough for them really._

* * *

_Metal smacked firmly against metal and Peter grinned because he had never really been able to go all out with his strength before. Their other teammates were so fragile, but Peter wasn't in his metal form and Hope wasn't as she healed almost before she realised she was hurt sometimes and her bones were reinforced with metal which could take his punches. She grinned back, delighted that she could fight freely and without worry._

* * *

_She gently smoothed down the creased paper and stared longingly at the picture of her mother's face. She missed her, missed her so much._

* * *

_She was splattered in blood, the blood of men that attempted to harm her kids and she found she didn't regret any of the deaths she dealt out and wondered if that made her a monster and realised that she really didn't care as long as it kept those she cared for, fucking loved, safe than she cared little about the monster she was turning into._

* * *

_Part of her, the part that she didn't realise was tense and attached already, eased when Logan sent her an email with a picture of Clarice and James with Peter. She realised that she had become attached to those brats and wondered if that made them her kids like Rogue, and maybe her, was Logan's._

* * *

_She hated robotic suits she realised as the Iron Monger nearly blew a hole through her chest and did in fact destroy most of her top so she would be flashing everyone her breasts._

* * *

"_We share a kinship," Thor told her, a smile of his rugged face and she snorted._

_He would be able to go home in the end while Hope would never see her mother again and would never be able to truly go back to her second home. SHIELD owned her ass after all._

* * *

_She stared blankly at the headstone, at Jean's headstone, and wondered if she was doing the right thing by not inferring. Hadn't she already changed things by just being here?_

* * *

_She refrained from laughing at Steve's red face, one would think he would be used to her changing in front of him but well, he still was a 40s man._

* * *

_She honestly didn't know why she always followed Clint up in to the rafters when she hated heights and was once unable to even get both her feet off the ground in PE when they were rock-climbing._

* * *

_She almost skipped towards where Hulk was standing._

"_I need a lift, big guy," she told him easily and didn't flinch as his large green hands wrapped around her and sent her flying through the air, something she didn't enjoy, and she crashed on to one of the aliens, something she did enjoy._

* * *

_She was choking on her blood, something she was very used too, and staring down at herself in disbelief because she wasn't healing, she wasn't fucking healing. _

"_Hope?" Rogue's voice was high in her panic and fear as she cradled her close, Hope's legs useless._

"_I'm," she choked again and stared up at her friend. "I'm not healing."_

* * *

Ana woke to the annoying beeping of a heart-machine and knew she was in a hospital—or at least some type of hospital that the base had.

Her head felt like someone had unloaded their gun in her.

"Ow, fuck," she swore as she reached up to cradle her head only for one her hands to be caught by warm hands, familiar hands.

"Ana," Alex choked and she was alarmed to see, as she peeked out from under her lashes, the tears in his blue eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asked, wincing at the light burning her eyes as Alex near enough fell on her and held her.

"You've been out for two days," Erik's voice was even though she could see the storm burning in his gaze. "After you fell screaming off a rail."

"What happened?" she grimaced and Erik's face darkened.

"Charles was too nosy for his own good," Erik hissed and she let her head flop back with a groan.

"I hate telepaths," she told no one in particular.

* * *

_Charles was horribly regretfully and couldn't stop apologising to me though I had sort of realised it wasn't all his fault. Erik was giving him dark looks when they weren't going out to find more mutants and Alex had almost become clingy._

_Charles at least trusted me now, can't say I feel the same about him at the moment. _


	7. Chapter 7

It was like being punched in the gut, having all the breath knocked out of you. That was what Ana was feeling as she stared at the back of Logan's head.

_Logan, Logan, Logan, _part of her cried and she wanted to cry too.

Logan had been there since she began at the school, Logan had helped her, trained her, been her friend. Logan had been willingly, with the others, to fight against SHIELD just so she could be free.

_You're one of us, _he had once said and she was now what he claimed but he wasn't _her_ Logan. He hadn't gone through any of the shit with his brother yet, he hadn't lost a woman he loved to his brother, he hadn't felt the pain of metal being bonded to his bones, he hadn't lost his memories and wandered lost for years, he hadn't saved Rogue, hadn't done so much.

But he was still Logan, more like her Logan than Charles was like Xavier and part of her wanted to fling herself at him like she used to, to feel his strong arms wrap around her in a way that made her feel more than safe as it made her feel protected.

She wanted to babble into his chest, breathing in his scent of cigars, beer and just something that was simply Logan, as she told him that she missed him so much, that she was an ungrateful brat before but she had finally grown up, that she wasn't ever going to leave him again, that he would never have to be alone again, that she wasn't going to let him go through all that pain, that this time she would protect him like he had tried to protect her.

She wanted to tell him how much she loved him, that she would be right with him through everything, that she would change things and he would never have to kill Jean because she wouldn't let Jean go crazy because she wasn't a coward any more, she was going to be brave, like him, like Rogue, like Kitty, like Peter, like James and like Clarice.

She wanted to ask him for his help because she knew she couldn't do this on her own.

She had forgotten that Charles and Erik met Logan long before the first 'movie', just like she forgot all about Tony until it was thrust into her face. She had been foolish, forgetful, how was she meant to protect them, change things, if she couldn't remember everything?

Despite being a mutant, despite being through all the shit she had been through, she was still human and memories fade. It was a fact of life, something she had accepted—and was annoyed by—in her first life because she was absolutely crap at remembering anything important. It was something she had improved on, but still, though she was only in her thirties, she had memories of living around a century and it had been decades—fucking decades—since she had watched the movies, and she hadn't been around much as Hope to know if there was other threats, problems, and such she had to worry about.

Logan turned to look at her then and she met his eyes firmly. There was a curiosity, a faint trace of annoyance, but there was no recognition.

She wanted to scream at him, tell him to remember her though logically she knew he had never met her before. But logic didn't apply to her when it came to Logan, because Logan had seemingly always been there. The two years of hell was something she didn't like to think about and she had hardly been at SHIELD a whole month before they were shipping her off to Xavier's.

Logan had been there for her, hadn't given her any pity, didn't put up with her bullshit, didn't care that she had an attitude problem the size of England, didn't care that she could—and often had—swore more times in one sentence then most people did in one day. He didn't pull his punches, didn't walk around on egg-shells despite knowing that she had been kept prisoner, had been little more than a lab-rat, for two years because he had understood her. He didn't treat her any different than he did Rogue, and she was used to that, used to him, and he didn't know her.

It was harder to look in to Logan's face and know he didn't have one fuckin' clue who she was then to stare Charles in the eyes and know the same thing. Logan looked the same, he was basically the same, and he didn't know her.

A hand on her shoulder startled her enough that she almost elbowed Charles' in the nose. She stared him, eyes wide and almost wild, and Charles felt his heart-clench.

He hadn't been trying to listen, hadn't purposely skimmed the surface of her mind. He had promised her when he had a apologised that he would never read her mind again (she had snorted and told him would because he was too curious for his own good but she would take a promise that he would never go further than her surface thoughts) and he had mostly kept that promise. But her thoughts were so loud, shouting, screaming, as she stared at the man they had come to recruit.

"We've got this one, Ana," he told her and she went completely still for a few moments and then with one last conflicting look at Logan, she fled the bar without once looking back.

Charles ignored the look at Erik shot him, things were still frosty between them, and kept his gaze on Logan. So this was where Ana got her love of leather coats from, huh? A man she loved and trusted dearly that didn't even know her.

* * *

_My third life, peaceful and rather boring, felt like a dream. Sometimes I can convince myself that I had dreamt it, that this is actually my third life and that pokémon life was just a dream. _

_Hope's life, my second life, was real. It was gritty, bloody and shit in places but I knew it was real, with my pokémon life I didn't know that._

_Perhaps that's why I've clung so hard to my mutant family, like I clung so hard to Mum before it became too painful to think about her and her disappointment at the monster I had become. _

_I would do anything, and I really meant that, for them, to change their fates and protect them._

_(I was still what they made me, just with my own twist)_

* * *

Alex was worried about Ana. Ana had three big fears; heights, deep water and spiders. So the fact that she had somehow climbed onto the roof of the rec room, was staying there and was sitting on the edge so her feet just breached the view of the window was worrying.

He shifted slightly, the statue wasn't that comfortable to lean against but it gave him a good view of her, and scowled when her glacier gaze skimmed over his face so she would know how pissed he was with her little climbing stunt—how she got up there was any bodies guess.

She didn't react, didn't even flash him her smug smirk or amused grin. She just sat there, like she had been since she got back from the latest recruiting binge that she had gone with Erik and Charles—stupid mind-reader was probably part of the problem—and Erik and Charles went on the last one alone to get Sean who looked too damn young to be anywhere near the CIA and part of a mutant secret-agent group.

Ana hadn't seen Sean yet, and Alex wasn't sure if he wanted to see her reaction. Like every human, Ana was complex.

She hated children—or at least strongly disliked them—and had the habit of calling parents 'Breeders' before she finally curbed that habit as she pulled some politeness from somewhere—Alex had almost pissed himself laughing when he first listened to her grumbling about Breeders and their spawns from Hell—he had no idea where as Ana wasn't big on manners and being polite.

She found children to be annoying, noisy and generally didn't tolerate them, but she was strangely protective of the young. She had been protective over him in the beginning, telling Erik firmly that Alex wasn't going to be involved with their 'job' and if Erik tried to make him part of it, she would remove his manhood with one of her trusty knives and make earrings out of his balls—both of the men had been aware that she meant it, Ana didn't do empty threats as she had learnt no one would take you seriously if you were all talk and no bite—and had started training him almost from the get go.

She helped him control his power so he wouldn't hurt people, but she trained him to fight to help protect him without his power when he was so afraid of using it that it sometimes lashed out during their training and Ana would end up with horrific wounds that all healed without any scars.

She would not be happy about a baby-faced boy in their group and Alex could foresee Sean gaining a type of bodyguard in the form of Ana, which may have been a good thing as Sean seemed to have a smart mouth that would get him into trouble.

He was broken by his thoughts by a dull thump and looked up just to see Ana slowly straighten and almost grimaced at her, she had obviously did some damage to her legs when she dropped though he knew it wouldn't really bother her.

Alex sometimes was very glad that her mutation was regenerative healing as she seemed to have little to no regard when it came to herself, shrugging off wounds that would cripple any normal humans.

"What the hell were you doing up there?" Alex asked as he pushed away from the statue and headed towards her, inwardly pleased when automatically her expression became a smirk. "I thought you hated heights."

"I once had a friend," she began as she linked arms with him and they began to walk inside. "He had to be half bird because he loved heights so much and he was always dragging me up with him. He said it was to help me get over my fear but I know the sadistic bastard just enjoyed watching me squirm."

Alex didn't ask what happened to her friend, he knew that all her old friends were gone and she only had them now.

"I'm sorry I worried you," she briefly rested her head on his shoulder and he just shrugged it off, he would never admit that she made him worry and she knew it.

But the shrug was also his way of saying that she shouldn't worry about it and a smile brief flashed across her face.

It quickly faded into a frown when they entered the rec room and she met the curious gaze of Sean Cassidy.

"Erik," she almost growled under her breath. "Charles, you two are in so much trouble."

And Alex smirked.

* * *

_Sean Cassidy. Gods, I hadn't once thought of him because he was long gone when I, Hope, knew the X-men and really it hadn't crossed my mind that Charles and Erik would be recruiting him like they did in the movie. _

_Darwin was in his thirties like us—Charles, Erik and myself—and the others—Raven, Hank, Alex and Angel—were closer to thirty then they were twenty. _

_Sean, though, he was just twenty at most. He was young, his face still youthful without much of a hint of his maturity. _

_His mop of copper hair made him look younger with his dancing dark eyes. He stood with all the casual arrogance of teenager still, firm in his naïve belief that nothing could hurt him and that was perhaps why he didn't even hesitate to join a secret mutant group under the care of the CIA. _

_He was young, too young, he couldn't actually legally drink alcohol yet and he was going to be facing Shaw. Fuck._

_But if that wasn't bad enough, I knew his fate. Knew what could befall on him and despite not even knowing him, I knew the moment I looked into those dancing, young and alive eyes that I wouldn't let Trask harm one hair on his head._

* * *

"Harder!" Darwin shouted gleefully, smugness clear on his face as both Sean and Alex attempted to make the armour covered man at least wince.

Ana laughed as Raven grabbed her hand and dragged her into a dance as Angel fluttered around them with a laugh and Hank swung from the ceiling.

Even if she hadn't remembered vague things from the movie, she knew something like this would happen. They had been seen as freaks for so long that the moment that they were surrounded by those like them they couldn't stop from showing off.

"What are you doing?" came the thunderous sound of Moira and immediately Raven let go, her face shocked and guilty as her gaze went straight to her foster brother.

"Great, Kill-joys," Ana said as she let herself flop back on one the couches and smiled at the glare that Moira levelled at her.

Hank flipped down onto his feet, his face shocked and slightly panicked.

"Who destroyed the statue?" Moira demanded.

"Alex," Hank automatically told and Alex turned, Ana was sure the words 'tattle-tell' was on his lips when Raven interrupted.

"Havok," she said, a smile on her face and looking so proud that Ana wanted to close her eyes because she knew how hurt Raven would be when Erik and Charles dismissed her. "He's name is Havok now, and we were thinking that you should be Professor X," she pointed at Charles, her smile large and proud, and Charles almost recoiled with a look of shock on his face before she turned to Erik. "And you, you should be Magneto."

"Exceptional," Erik muttered and Raven's smile faded as she lowered her hand slowly.

"How could you—"Ana stood up as Moira began to go into a tirade and Alex smirked as he slowly dropped the pole that he had been hitting Darwin with.

"Shut up," Ana spoke, eyes narrowed and glaring on the agent, she absently noticed that Erik took a few steps back. "You have no right to scold them."

"They destroyed a statue of a man that has placed his career on the line by speaking up for them, and well as this room," Moira glared at her.

"Forgive me if I have little sympathy for a man that has hunted us with the same fanatical obsession of some of those alien hunters," Ana spoke coldly, almost cruelly as she looked down at Moira with a sneer. "I also have little sympathy for the agents that stare at us like we're a freak show, who will have to repair this damage."

"Ana," Charles attempted to interrupt.

"No," she cut him off. "I will not stand by and let her make them feel bad. She has no idea what it's like to being seen as a freak, of hating yourself and such because of something you can't control. It's normal to want to show off when you're surrounded by others like you and I won't have any of you make them feel bad about finally being about to be themselves freely."

Moira stared up her with wide eyes and Ana could feel the gazes of the others on her back.

"They are mine," she spoke fiercely. "And I'll protect them from anything and anyone."

Erik clapped slowly, breaking the tension.

"I told you she has a soft side," he told Charles, a smirk on his features and Ana scoffed.

"Don't think I'm not angry with both of you," she snarled. "Really Erik?"

He winced and his gaze automatically darted to where Sean was standing.

* * *

_They were going to Russia and I refused to join them. I couldn't remember what was about to happen but I know I have to be here, with the others, to protect them. _

_It was frustrating really that I couldn't remember what was exactly was going to happen, it had been too long really. _

_But like I told Moira. I will protect them from anything and anyone. _

_I died once protecting mutants that were my family and I would do it again for this family of mine. _


	8. Chapter 8

Sean—Banshee—didn't know how it happened really. He had always had trouble when it came to the females of his species—be them still naïve enough to be classed as girls or mature enough that they could only be women—and he had gotten used to it, and had even learnt to laugh at his failures when it came to trying to get a date.

But since he joined Division X—dubbed by Raven (Mystique) after they came up with code-names—he had a woman—an actual real life woman—paying attention to him.

Ana—Ambrosia—had taken one look at him and tucked him under her wing and he didn't mind at all.

Alex—Havok—had smirked at him when Ana first pulled him down to sit beside her and started talking to him about everything that made Sean him.

It was something that he would get used to, he thought as he munched another biscuit with Ana sat between him and Hank—still unnamed.

"No one told me the circus was in town," came the mocking words of one of the agents and Angel—only Angel—stiffened, anger lining her pretty face and Hank stood up to close the curtains when Ana stood and walked to the window.

Her long hair was loose and fell down her back in caramel waves—curled from all the time she had it twisted up in a bun or such—and he could see her glacier eyes were cold from her reflection on the glass and he wondered how she could so easily make people feel like dirt from one look.

"Circus?" she asked, her tone seemingly innocent, her head cocked to one side as if she was curious. "I didn't realise that clowns wore black suits. Aren't you meant to be endearing and colourful?"

He snickered as the agent gaped at Ana, who smiled sweetly at them before she closed the curtains.

"Government agents," Ana muttered in deep disgust as she turned in a swirl of hair.

"They're just guys being stupid," Raven said as Ana flopped gracelessly on the couch.

"Guy's being stupid I'm used to," Angel said, anger still clear in her voice. "I would rather have guys stare at me with my clothes off than how they do."

"You're different, a mutant, and shouldn't let stupid men make you feel ashamed of who you are," Ana spoke up. "Everyone is different, we just show it more than others. It's nothing to be ashamed off."

"Mutant and proud, huh?" Raven asked and Ana smiled.

"Exactly,"

Ana's head snapped to the curtained window as an odd sound echoed back at them, the look on her face was wary and fierce at the same time as she stood. One hand reached for one of the blades she kept strapped to her side while the other she held out like she was reaching to push them all behind her so she could protect them easier which wasn't at all comforting to Sean.

"What the hell was that?" Darwin asked and Alex tensed as he moved to flank Ana.

"Trouble," Ana said grimly as Hank moved to open the curtain and they huddled close together as they peered out of the window, Ana's knuckles were white with how tight she was holding her knife.

"Oh my god," Sean breathed as Angel and Raven cried out as a body landed heavily and broken on the ground outside the window as other men rained down from the sky, each landing broken and dead on the ground.

"Back away," Ana ordered as other agents rushed out into the courtyard, all of them shouting at them to get back from the window as a devil, wearing a dark suit, appeared where the statue was in a puff of red smoke.

"Behind you!" Raven screamed as Darwin shouted the same while Ana bodily pushed them back as the gunfire started and they all hid behind the couch as the glass shattered and stray bullets hit the couch and the wall above them.

He stared at his hands—they were shaking—as he felt Ana push him further down and he knew that both Ana and Darwin were protecting them—the only two who would be able to handle being shot at—and he dimly wondered if he was going to wet his pants because he was that scared and wasn't ashamed to admit that.

* * *

Raven was crying, Hank was attempting to comfort her by holding her hand but she could feel him shaking and knew that he was just as a scared as she was, as everyone was, accept from Ana—even Alex was scared.

"We need to get out of here," Darwin yelled with his back armoured as he crouched over them, protecting them.

"And go where?" Ana's voice was sharp though her hand was gentle as she placed it on Sean's shaking back—he was so pale that his freckles stuck out brightly.

Hank had always known that the CIA was supposed to be dangerous, but he was just a scientist. Just the guy in the lab coat that most of the agents forgot about and had no field training—he still flinched when he walked past the firing-range—and had been mostly left alone until Charles Xavier showed up with his beautiful sister—a beautiful woman that was actually interested in him—with Erik Lehnsherr, Alex Summers and Ana in tow and ousted him as a mutant to his boss.

He was a part of an actual CIA team now though the only field training he got was from Ana—who refused to take no for an answer—and now his life was in danger.

Things seemed to blur and he couldn't, didn't want too, focus on what was happening until they walked in, flanking them from three directions and each wearing a crisp suit that showed no hint of the violence they had unleashed to enter the compound.

Ana stood in front of them, had herded them back so they were against the wall, and stood proud and defiant.

"Anastasia?" The leader, Sabastian Shaw, asked in almost delighted surprise as he finally took in the mutants in the room after his friend, Azazel, finished off what had to be the last agent in the whole compound.

"Herr Doctor," Ana's voice took on a German accent as she replied in greeting and Hank stared at her back.

Ana had never said much of her past, he knew that she had been in one of those camps with Erik. The numbers scrawled into the inside of their left arms told everyone where they had met and he knew that Erik had a grudge against Shaw—and she most likely had one too—but he never thought to ask if her name was short for anything then again he didn't think to ask many questions when it came to Ana.

"Call me Sabastian, Anastasia," Shaw smiled as he walked towards, a single dismissing glance was taken at the knife still in her hands but he halted just outside her arm's reach. "Surely we know each other well enough. I was the one that named you after all."

"You say that like its meant to mean something," Ana's accent was back to her normal British one and her tone was curt.

"It's almost like I'm your father, isn't it?" Shaw seemingly ignored her as he continued with a little smirk on his face.

"Fathers don't strap their daughters to metal slabs, fathers don't slice their daughter's open, fathers don't take out their daughters eyes or remove their daughter's limbs—especially when she's awake and screaming," Ana's voice shook with barely restrained fury. "Fathers don't repeatedly drown their daughters, don't repeatedly shoot their daughters."

Hank felt sick as he stared at Ana's back in horrified silence and gripped Raven's hand tightly. This man, this monster, had put Ana through that?

"You're not holding a grudge for that?" Shaw sounded disappointed and Ana's hand twitched when he made that disappointing sound he had always made just before showing a whole other level of cruelty. "I was merely helping you with your power, helping you make it stronger, Anastasia. And it worked didn't it? You are here, strong and proud, beautiful and young."

"That has nothing to do with you," she dismissed. "You should leave."

"I'm not here to harm them," Shaw attempted to sooth.

"No, you're not," Ana agreed. "You're here to recruit."

"I'm offering them freedom," Shaw spread his hands wide.

"You're going to start another war, a nuclear war," Ana's voice was cold. "One of your more stupid ideas."

His friends bristled and Shaw's smile faltered.

"It will make us stronger,"

"It'll destroy the world," Ana countered, taking a single step forward though Shaw didn't flinch away. "It'll kill flora and fauna, if the blasts doesn't kill everything then the sickness will."

"You seem awfully sure," Shaw observed.

"I read," she simply shrugged one shoulder. "You will destroy this world, ruin everything and there will be no utopia, for humans or mutants."

"So you will stay here? Fight for the people that hate and fear you?" Shaw asked incredulously.

"I don't fight for them," Ana sneered, her pretty features twisting in hate. "I am a child of War, a product of Violence, I have stared at the worst of Humanity in the face and known kinship. I do not fight for humans, I fight for the few I give a damn about, for the animals who have no interest in human politics and myself—mostly myself though."

Hank knew she was lying, knew she fought for Alex, Erik and Sean. For himself, Raven, Darwin, Angel and Charles. But he also knew she was telling the truth in a way, she was fighting for herself, she was a survivor after all.

"You will not let me recruit without a fight."

It wasn't a question, it was a statement of fact and Ana tensed, seemingly already aware of what was going to happen though Hank didn't, his mind seemed to stall, and all he could do is stare blankly as the devil, Azazel, disappeared in a puff of bright smoke and she lashed at as he appeared in front of her.

His pointed tail pierced through her hand, messing with the nerves so the slightly bloody blade fell from limp fingers, and his two blades sunk into her chest and he pushed her down, pressing the blades further into her with brutal strength and over the girls' screams, Hank could almost hear the blades burying themselves in the floor.

Azazel seemed to be almost straddling Ana's form, hands gripping the blades as he readied to twist them out of her.

"Don't,"

Azazel glanced over his shoulder at his leader.

"She'll be up and fighting in no time if you remove those blades," Shaw explained as her choking breathing filled the air.

Azazel nodded and let go as he stood, stepping carelessly away from her.

* * *

Sean wanted to throw up as he stared down at Ana. The blades had to be buried through her lungs as her chest barely moved and each breath brought frothy blood to her lips, her hands were gripped around the blades and attempting to tug them out but she didn't have the right angle for the needed strength and could do nothing.

He had never realised how dark red blood really was nor did he realise how much blood a human body could hold.

He fell to his knees, batting away hands and crawled over to Ana.

Her glacier eyes were pained and widened when he came into her sight, panic made her choke harsher and he attempted to sooth her with shaky hands.

"You always did like protecting stray little boys Anastasia," Shaw mused though Sean barely heard him and didn't hear him as he went through his recruitment speech.

All Sean was aware of was the blood staining his hands as he held Ana's, of her glacier eyes staring up at him still alive despite all the blood pooling around them, staining their clothes and making his jeans stick horribly to his skin, despite the two wicked blades in her chest.

* * *

_Blades burn as they slid through muscle, bone and into organ. They slice through the muscle of lungs like it's just paper and blood fills them as you choke as you drown in your own blood._

_If you're like me you can also feel as your body attempts to heal but can't because the blades are still in your lungs, still causing you to drown in your own blood._

* * *

"Raven!" Panic had broken Charles' normal calm as he rushed up the stairs and Raven near flew into his arms with a cry.

Erik's eyes were wide and searching as he followed and looked for Ana and Alex.

Ana was sitting on the stone bench, covered in blood and her hair had been half-heartily put up, and was running her long fingers through Sean's hair, his pale hands were twisted in her blood stained top and his head was rested on her lap, and Alex sat next to her, elbows rested on his knees and face in his hands.

"Ana," Erik almost breathed in relief as he made his way over to them and she smiled at him, her skin was a horribly pale colour and dark circles were under her eyes.

There was a weakness to her that he hadn't seen in years.

"They killed Darwin," Raven sobbed into Charles' shoulder behind him and he realised that Angel was also missing.

"She joined Shaw," Ana answered his unspoken question.

"He came here?" he almost snarled as Ana nodded, sure he knew that Shaw had been behind the attack on the compound but he didn't actually think the man would come here.

But he had, he had come and threatened their team, had harmed Ana again when Erik had promised her that he would never let that man hurt her again.

One of her hands reached for his and she entwined their fingers.

"It's okay, I'm fine now," she squeezed his fingers though it did little to reassure him.

"I'm sorry,"

I'm sorry I wasn't there, I'm sorry that I didn't bring you with me, I'm sorry that I broke my promise, I'm sorry that he hurt your kids, I'm sorry that Darwin's dead, I'm sorry I'm glad it was him and not you or Alex, I'm sorry.

"I know,"

I know, I understand.

* * *

**AN: Hate it? Like it? What do you think?**

**I was really stuck on this chapter and I'm still not wholly happy with it. **


	9. Chapter 9

"This is yours?" Sean knew he was gaping, but he couldn't help it.

Charles had lived in a fuckin' mansion that could probably fit his parents' house and next door neighbour with enough room left for a huge swimming pool. He had known that had Charles had grown up well, the way he talked and the quality of clothes spoke of that but he didn't realise that Charles was this well off.

"It's ours now," Charles answered simply, the casual disregard only those who grew up rich could have in his tone.

"How did you survive such hardship?" Erik asked in such a serious tone that it was hard to tell he was joking—but Erik was always like that.

Raven bounced up, a lightness to her that hadn't been apparent during their stay at the CIA compound, and threw a casual arm around Charles' shoulders.

"A hardship made bearable by me," she joked, a smile lighting up her face.

"Ana?" Alex's confused—and down right near concerned—tone brought Sean's attention to the only other woman in their group.

Ana stood away from the rest of the group, her caramel hair curling around her shoulders—she had gotten Raven to cut it as the attack had left most of it matted with blood or cut oddly where she had been stabbed—and her hands buried deep in the pockets of her leather jacket.

The was an odd expression on her face, emotions too fast flickering over her sharp features, and her glacier eyes were oddly bright as though she was about to cry—which made him both uncomfortable and panicked as Ana hadn't even cried when choking and drowning in her blood, hadn't broken down in sobs when the realisation that Darwin was dead sunk in and only let a few tears escape with no fanfare as she hugged Alex tightly as Alex almost went comatose with the realisation that he had indirectly killed Darwin, who had been quickly become Alex's best friend.

"Anastasia?" Erik murmured to her as he touched her shoulder—it was still weird to hear her full name—and she seemed to almost fall into his side as he wrapped one arm securely around her waist with a look of worry on his face.

Ana's gaze didn't move from the house, from their new home, and Sean wondered if she had been here before or somewhere like here.

"I'm sorry," the words seemed foreign from her as Ana wasn't one that did something that she didn't mean, didn't apologise because she was too damn honest to curb her thoughts when around them and only grudgingly apologised when Charles gave her his best disappointed look—Sean was sure he had never seen her say sorry before. "I used to live in a place just like this."

"You're rich too?" Sean blurted out and a half-smile crossed her lips.

"I worked for my money though not through the most honest way," she told him though her gaze hardly moved from the mansion. "I lived in a school once, just like this, and it was my home."

"A school was your home?" Alex asked. "How did you survive being around all those kids?"

"I was actually fond of the little brats," she mused.

"Where are they now?"

If looks really could kill then Sean would be dead twice other by the near deadly looks that both Erik and Alex levelled him.

"Gone," Ana said, her tone flat. "They're all gone."

* * *

_I didn't like children, I didn't actually like most people, but those students had wormed their way into my heart, had gotten under my skin, and I had become fond of them—I had cared for them, I had fought to protect them, and in a way I died to save them. _

_But they were gone now, familiar strangers would one day take their places and perhaps I would become fond of them as well._

* * *

Walking towards where Ana was sitting a flash of memory, hers not his, filtered through his mind as she was sat in the same spot she had whenever Xavier and her had a heart-to-heart and her caramel hair was briefly replaced by short dark hair and a shorter frame that was so different from the taller form that was Ana.

"'Lo Charles," she greeted without once looking back, her gaze fixed on where one day a basket-ball court and such would be built for the students that he would one day find and bring to safety.

"It must be strange being here," Charles mused as he glanced around the wide sweeping grounds of his childhood home.

"I can almost feel myself falling into old habits," she frowned. "I was a right little brat back then."

"Really?" he asked. "I don't think you were that bad."

"Perhaps I'm too hard on myself," she mused, an odd look on her face. "The Professor once said I was too hard on myself."

Charles shifted, it was odd for him to be referred to and yet not at the same time.

"How's training with Hank and Sean coming?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him.

"Well," he nodded and she smiled, a small amused smile.

"Still can't get Sean to fly?"

"I'm hesitate to try from the satellite as I know Erik will push him off without warning," Charles confined and Ana laughed.

"Perhaps that's what needs to be done," she told him. "Have a little faith."

"That seems strange coming from you," Charles mused mostly to himself.

"What does?"

"Having faith,"

A flash of a memory, a man's face lost in shadows of the dark night with familiar golden eyes staring back, went through her mind at that and she looked at him and silently let the memory unfold, allowing him to watch.

* * *

"_What is it with people and bloody heights!" she exclaimed as she clung to the three-fingered hand that she was holding as the man, Kurt, carefully helped her sit on the roof._

_She was so much younger then Charles ever knew, freer in a way and more childish. This was in affect Ana's childhood._

"_What is with you and swearing?" Kurt countered, his accent quite thick._

"_I like swearing," she shrugged and Kurt mimicked her shrug as he said; "I like heights."_

_She glared for a moment before laughing as she turned to look at the night sky. _

"_Isn't this beautiful?" Kurt asked as he admired the night sky. _

"_Sure, who doesn't like seeing reflections of a million balls of gas," she replied though it was clear she liked looking up at the stars too._

"_You don't believe that it represents heaven? The gateway between Heaven and earth." _

"_I don't believe in heaven at all,"_

"_Don't you have faith?"_

"_Nope,"_

"_That's rather sad," Kurt mused. "With a name like yours, I would have thought you would believe in something."_

"_I believe in survival,"_

"_That seems even worse,"_

"_Perhaps," she shrugged, "but I've seen too much to believe in a place like Heaven, though if it does exist then I guess I'm going to hell."_

"_That's a rather dim view to have,"_

"_I'm a killer, a murderer, and that is against God's law. I have seen the worse people, I've have seen cruelty, hatred, rage, and all other things that make me dislike people more and I can be all those things easily."_

"_Don't you like anything about people? Don't you have something you believe in that isn't survival?"_

_She was silence for a moment and it was clear that Kurt thought she wasn't going to answer._

"_I guess I believe in the little bit of goodness of people that I have seen, I believe in the love I have seen, I believe in the hope that people cling too and the happiness that these people have helped me feel again. I like those things about people I guess."_

"_So you do have faith after all,"_

"_That's what you take from my sappy speech?"_

"_I don't think it was sappy," Kurt disagreed and she laughed._

"_If you say so,"_

* * *

"I have faith," Ana told him, breaking him from her memory. "It's not the faith most people have, it's not a faith that I have to go to church for, there are no Gods I worship nor do I beg for some higher power to forgive me and purge me of my sins. I don't even fully believe that there is some higher power is messing with me though I'll always complain about that.

I believe in survival and in people, I believe in their love and hate, in the great acts of cruelty and compassion that some people can do. Compassion though will never come easy to me, I'm too filled with sharp edges and missing jagged pieces, too cruel to be compassionate easily."

"I think you're kinder than you think," Charles told her.

"I've been told that before," she informed him, amused. "I still don't believe it though. But that's enough about faith and all that bullshit."

Charles snorted and laughed at that way she said that and held out his hand for her to hold and helped her up.

"I have never met a woman like you before," he said with almost an admiring tone.

"I would still break you in one night," she told him before she left him sputtering.

"I'm not flirting with you!" he shouted at her retreating back and she laughed as she waved over her shoulder at him.

* * *

_I like to think I've matured since I was known as Hope, I know I've curbed by swearing some. I think I'm no longer the teenager in mind, awkward and moody, I've finally become an adult. _

_Confident, almost completely certain of my own path, perhaps a bit more kind, and a lot less angry. _

_Gods, wasn't I a moody bitch? Then again, going through the shit I went through, I suppose I have some excuse for being a bitch. _

_I've mellowed in ways, but I think I've become sharper in other ways._

* * *

Hank, perhaps, should be more aware of surrounding considering he shared a home with Erik, Ana and Raven—all three could walk without a sound and two took perverse delight in scaring the shit out of people by randomly appearing out of nowhere and suddenly commenting on something.

But well, Hank was a bit preoccupied with his newest break through as he was sure he had the working formula of a cure.

"Still working on a cure?"

Hank jumped and a curse slipped past his lips as his notebook fell from his hands. He scrambled to get it and looked up to see Ana perched on his stool, her pale eyes near glowing in the dim light.

"Yes," he answered hesitantly as he stared at her, there was something off about her expression and her tone but he couldn't tell what.

"Why?" she asked him, head tilted to one side.

"Why what?" he asked in mild confusion and she rolled her eyes like he was being dumb—something that was new to him and offended slightly.

"Why do you want a cure? Why are you so focused on one? Why can't you accept yourself as you are? Why are you going to break Raven's heart?" Ana listed with a shrug of her shoulders. "Take your pick."

"W-what?" he frowned at her. "What do you mean? How am I going to break Raven's heart?"

Ana sighed and crossed her legs, she stared at him with serious eyes.

"Pick the hardest one, why don't'cha?" she asked. "You want to create a cure that makes mutants, that have abilities like yours and Raven's that show in an obvious way, look 'normal'. You don't accept yourself as you are, different, unique, and at the moment you can't accept what Raven really looks like—no matter how much you care for her or she for you.

Raven's beginning to finally accept herself, her true self, and realise that she's beautiful as she is without having to use her power to make her appear normal. You are striving for a cure, to be normal, and you are male, you'll tactlessly make a comment that will break her heart and ruin what you have now."

"I—I,"

Her face softened slightly, "We shouldn't have to hide who we are, we shouldn't have to wish to appear normal, and Raven's realising that. We don't need to be cured Hank, we are perfectly fine and normal for us as we are."

"You don't understand,"

"I once had my left arm hacked off and replaced with a gleaming silver one," she told him without blinking. "I had people stare at me like I was a freak, people stared at me oddly with pity and disgust. That wasn't something I could hide from people easily like you and Raven can Hank, and I didn't care because at the time it was part of me."

Hank looked away from her, "Not all of us have your confidence Ana,"

"And you think I was always this confident?" she laughed harshly. "I've been like you, timid and such, but I have never given in to the demands of other people, I never attempted to fit into their version of normal, as I'm happy as I am, Raven is finally becoming happy with who she is, why can't you, Hank? Why can't you accept yourself and stop looking for a cure when there is no need for one?"

She sighed again and looked around the gleaming equipment around them.

"I hate people sometimes, I hate their narrow minded views and their stupid need to be 'normal' and everything that isn't normal has to be cured. Homosexuals don't have to be cured, people born in the wrong body need help not thrown into an institute, mutates shouldn't have to hide or be cured—"she cut herself off and glanced at him. "I'm ranting, sorry."

"I need to do this Ana," Hank told her firmly and she sighed, a sad look graced her face.

"No you don't, but you will," she stood and began to leave, only pausing to brush a kiss on his cheek. "I hope you will learn to accept yourself one day."

She left Hank standing there, his notebook held limply in his hands.


	10. Chapter 10

She could remember when Ana had long hair that tumbled down her back when she released it from her ponytails, knots, and buns—always with that decorative blade acting like a simple hair piece. She had always liked Ana's hair—an odd shade that looked brown in the dim light and under sunlight looked like dark blonde—and when they had shared a room in the compound, she had often put braids and such in Ana's hair—like she heard and read about girls doing on sleepovers, something she had never done as she always shifted back to her base form in her sleep—and Ana hadn't complained, barely winced when she accidently pulled too harsh on her hair. It was odd seeing Ana's hair so short, short enough that it showed a hint of curls at the end that were normally only visible after Ana had taken down her hair or after she had showered and her hair still damp.

Ana was her first friend outside of Charles really. Erik was more distance, more serious, and only acted as a personally confidence coach for her sometimes. Alex was mostly a loner, he had spent years with only Ana and Erik around him, and Raven suspected that Alex kind of resented having to share them with others.

Hank had always been more than a friend, she had been attracted to him when she first saw him and that grew when she realised that he, a fellow mutant, knew just how she felt about wanting to be normal, to fit in.

(Even amongst the freaks, she was a freak)

Ana though, she wasn't distance like Erik and though she preferred spells of time alone, she wasn't as much as a loner as Alex. Ana wasn't highly intelligent like Charles and Hank, who made most people feel stupid by just speaking something remotely simple to them, nor did she attempt to shield her like Charles had done since they had met as children.

Raven admired Ana, perhaps more than she ever had Charles because of the simple fact that Ana was female, and she knew that Ana would do anything to keep them safe—as shown when she tried to protect them from Shaw—though she would never coddle them, she would state the facts of things bluntly and not try to sugar-coat things like Charles would in the name of protecting them.

Perhaps that's why Raven trusted Ana so much, perhaps that's why she found herself in the shadows of Ana's room, watching as the older woman made faces as she attempted to find music she liked on the radio that she had placed on her bedside table.

Ana's room was different than the others, it was further away and was one of the smaller bedrooms in the manor. Her curtains were almost constantly drawn—"I'm like a vampire, I hate the sun," she had confined with a wink—and her bed was never made—"Why make it when I'm just going to mess it up again?" she had asked when Charles had chided her like Ana was a child and he her parent—and against the walls were metal bookcases that Erik had made for her—"Oi, I want some bookcases," "Do I look like a carpenter?" "No, but you look like someone that would love to bend these sheets of metal into bookcases so he doesn't suffer the wrath of his dear friend," "You're threat wasn't at all subtle," "It wasn't meant to be, now do it," "Fine,"—cramped with books and she knew that wardrobes were empty as Ana only had jeans, t-shirts and underwear that she was perfectly happy stuffing into draws and only took care enough to hang her leather jacket off a hook.

She didn't bother with extra things that she didn't need—"I once worked in the government as an Agent, you learn not to have much things that you can't take with you in case you have a sudden assignment or need to leave a base quickly," she had explained, "When were you in the government before?" Erik had asked very curious and with a frown, "I'm a lot older than I look," she had simply replied to Erik's frustration—and the only things she really took care of were her weapons—a gun in her bedside draw, a knife strapped on the inside her wrist that with a certain twist could unhinge itself so she could thrust her hand out and stab someone, a locked solid wooden box filled with her other weapons at the foot of her bed with all the locks and joints made out of wood—and her leather jacket as even her large amount of simple jewellery was carelessly discarded on the top of her dresser.

Her room was rather simple really, with only the things she really needed or wanted in it. She didn't really attempt to hide anything, just like she never attempted to hide her thoughts that she voiced or how she felt about certain things.

"If you're trying to sneak up on me," Ana's dry tone broke her from her thoughts—it was so strange how such a soft voice could be so cutting and dry with such apparent ease. "I would advise you wait till I'm weapon-less so you have a better chance."

"You're never without a weapon," Raven pointed out as she stepped in the dim light.

"Exactly," Ana glanced over with glacier eyes, "I try my best not to be unaware, even in my own room," she paused as her gaze drifted up and down Raven's body as if she just realised Raven's state of dress though Raven doubted that was the case. "Trying the naturist look, Raven? You'll give poor Hank a stroke, Sean a nosebleed and might actually make Alex blush."

There, that was why Raven had come to Ana. No comment about her being in her base form (as Ana had coined it so long again it seemed), no thoughtless remark about her being beautiful in her usual disguise of normalcy, no demand to put clothes on and her eyes merely met Raven's golden eyes squarely, not once drifting away like she couldn't stand to look at Raven.

She was just Ana and that was what Raven needed. Not Hank's self-loathing that made him unable to see that they shouldn't have to change, not Erik's confusing words that somehow helped her accept herself just that little bit more and also demanded her to face the truth, not Charles' disapproving tone and shifting glaze.

"No," Raven was startled by how stern and yet almost panicked Ana sounded. "No, bad, bad, no crying, I don't do crying,"

Her hand moved almost by itself so she could touch her cheek and she was surprised to find she was crying, just like Ana had said.

Ana made a face as she strode across the room towards her, the overly large t-shirt that she slept in easily showed off her long toned legs, and tugged Raven to her bed where they sat, Raven curled into Ana as she cried and hiccupped for a reason she couldn't understand.

* * *

"Why don't you do crying?"

"Mm?" Ana asked sleepily as she slowly opened her eyes, Raven was still curled into her but they were now under the covers and warm which was a recipe for sleep.

"Why don't you do crying?" Raven repeated, a curious tone to her still rather hoarse voice.

"I never told you about how Shaw knew I was a mutant, did I?" Ana asked, her gaze fixed on the plain ceiling as she felt Raven's head shake. "I was young, tiny, and had been found by a Nazi convoy in occupied Poland. I'm not sure why I was there nor how I got there," she paused as she thought back to the first disorienting moments when she woke up by the side of a road—in a bloody dress of all things—and how her stomach seemed to drop when she realised that she was surrounded by Nazis—again. "I was taken to Auschwitz and was considered useless for labour so they made me line up with other woman—most had small children—and the sick and elderly."

Raven stayed very still as she realised where the story was going.

"We were told that we were going to have a shower—no one was fooled but the children—and we were herded to the chambers, after being crudely branded like cattle, and after we stripped we were locked into one of the chambers," Ana paused, a faraway look on her face. "So many of the women were crying, which made the children cry, and others banged against the door and walls with pleas of mercy. I sat by an old woman and simply watched them break down in fear—I had never liked crying, but I downright hated it in those moments. Then the gas came bellowing in, black and choking, and the screams started. I will never forget those screams."

For a long moment there was no talking, only the radio still played in the background, as Ana remembered and Raven was struck silence by horror and guilt.

"I won't tell you how they died, nor will I tell you what it felt like going through that. When they finally opened the doors, confident that all of us were dead, they were surprised that I was still alive, hale like I had never breathed in poisonous gas," a chuckle let her lips then. "I had never seen a metal door close so fast in my life. I had frightened them," there was a vicious delight in those words, "I shouldn't be alive and yet I was," pale eyes glanced down at her for a moment, a dark humour glittering out of them. "I began singing about bottles of beer to frighten them more—"

"You sang?" Raven blurted out, interrupting Ana.

"Badly," Ana laughed seemingly unaware that Raven was now considering the state of her friend's sanity before she suddenly sobered. "Then he came, he was called Klaus Schmidt then, and he gave me my name, Anastasia. I won't tell you about all the things he put me through in the name of 'helping me' as it would cause you nightmares—it sometimes causes _me_ nightmares," she added when Raven opened her mouth to argue or something and Raven's mouth shut with a click. "Since then, my tolerates for crying has become non-existent."

"Yet you still have a soft-side," Raven mused. "Though Erik and Alex would have us all believe that you're a sadistic."

"Well they're not lying," Ana chuckled. "When you go through all the shit I've been through, you find it hard to be soft and kind."

Raven kept silent, her mind filling with questions but she knew she wouldn't like the answers that Ana would give her—Ana would always answer their questions even if it hurt them or horrified them because that was the type of person she was.

"Why did you come creeping to my room and cry?" Ana asked with a questioning lilt to her voice.

Raven bit her lip as she thought back to what had brought her to Ana's room—and naked none the less.

"Hank finished his cure," she began and Ana cut her off with an understanding sound.

"And because he is a male, he made a hurtful comment without thinking," Ana finished for her and Raven nodded miserably and Ana made a scornful scoff. "Men, fools the lot of them, and yet for some reason we always love at least one of their gender."

"I thought he loved me," Raven admitted in a small voice. "Me, not the looks I was wearing."

Ana sighed, "he does love you, in his own way, but lack of confidence and self-loathing makes it difficult to accept everything that means being a mutant. It's rather sad really."

"Have you ever loved someone?" Raven asked and Ana was quiet for a few beats.

"I once loved someone very much," she admitted quietly. "He was like me in many ways, jagged and jaded, and he accepted me when I was at my most bitchest. I would have done anything for him and he would for me, but I'm not sure if that's the love you mean. I'm sure he saw me as a kid, his own daughter really."

"How did you see him?" Raven asked catching on that Ana hadn't stated how she felt for him and Ana glanced down at her with an amused smirk.

"Clever girl," she praised and Raven almost preened in pride. "I don't know if I loved him like that, I've never loved anyone before. I have loved those I considered my family, I love you people and I think fondly on the few faded memories I have of my mother. But have I ever loved like that? I can't say."

"That seems rather sad," Raven mused and Ana chuckled.

"You're not the first person to say I've a sad life,"

"I didn't mean it like that!" Raven protested.

"But it's true," Ana just smiled and for the first time Raven really looked at Ana and realised how young she looked.

Ana was meant to be the same age as Erik, older than Charles and all of them, but she looked so much younger. There were no frown or smile lines appearing around her eyes, mouth or forehead like Charles and Erik were starting to gain. The only hints of lines happened to appear when she smiled or made a face.

"How old are you?" Raven asked as she stared at Ana's smooth face.

"Why?" Ana asked and Raven realised for the first time that Ana had never truly stated her age.

"You look young, like you're the same age as me and the others, but Erik believes that you're the same age as him and yet your eyes are so much older," Raven explained and Ana smirked.

"Clever girl," Ana praised once again but didn't answer.

Perhaps that was the most telling thing, Ana was a lot older then she looked and wasn't going to admit how old she really was.

* * *

Ana, for a while, simply stared down at Raven's sleeping form and decided—promised herself—that she wouldn't let Raven become anything like her.

Ana was broken, ruined in a way that would never be fixed. She was missing pieces and those that had been stuck back together didn't fit right anymore.

She was a product of torture, a result of experimentation. She had been broken down, ripped of everything that had once made her kind or compassionate, filled with molten fury and cold cruelty, and rebuild to be a ruthless weapon.

They had never broken her spirit though, she hadn't let them. She was as stubborn as fuck and wouldn't let anyone break her spirit—break her body? Sure, go ahead, bones and weeping wounds heal. Break her mind? Why not? Who needs to be wholly sane to survive? Break her spirit? Fuck off, she'd kill anyone that attempted to or even started to succeed to.

Ana knew herself, knew that she was cruel and ruthless in a way that would make those around her flinch away from her and stare in absolute fear—even Erik, cruel though he was, didn't have the cold cruelty and ruthlessness that was as much part of her as her blood—and frankly though the thought hurt—why did she always let people in? They always died in the end, always left her, and she could never keep them completely safe—she would gladly see them alive and fearing her then dead and cold.

SHIELD hadn't attempted to curb her ruthlessness or cruelty, they had encouraged her because that had made her good at what she needed to do. They hadn't really attempted to fix her, why should they? She worked perfectly fine as she was.

Xavier had attempted too, but he knew he couldn't. Jean and the others never knew how deeply she was broken. And Logan? He was like her in too many ways and knew it was useless to try to 'fix' her. He had just been there for her, helped her channel her anger so it was a weapon she could use and not be used against her and helped her through the night terrors—nightmares just didn't cover it.


	11. Chapter 11

_I was once a normal girl, lazy and such, who thought herself stronger then she was. I was a girl with a life-long illness that made it so I would never work a day in my life—at least it freed up time for reading and playing my games._

_Then I died and I was shown how exactly weak I was. I was broken down into a bloody, weeping, mess and rebuild stronger, sharper, faster, better. _

_I had become a survivor, a fighter, a warrior._

_I was trained by a Ghost, by assassins and mutants, I was the partner to a Legend, I had earned the respect of Gods and I had stared fearlessly into the eyes of a Raging monster and earned his own version of loyalty and respect. _

_Then I died again, and again._

_I grew up, matured, and became colder perhaps. _

_I had hunted Nazis, but I never let the skills my teachers taught me dull. My friends, new family, called me Ambrosia—immortal because that's basically what I've become. _

_But I have another name, a name I had built up in secret, covered in blood and creeping from the shadows. _

_I am a Ghost, much like my first teacher, but better known. Governments whisper about me in darken corners, crooked men and men with many powerful enemies worry I will appear to give them death. _

_Other assassins raise their glasses to my name, though in their hearts brewed envy and greed._

_I am Reaper and perhaps it was time to let the world know that the Reaper was protecting mutants._

* * *

It hadn't really sunken in until the compound was attacked that being 'secret' agents was dangerous, but it hadn't truly sunken in that they may have to kill someone until they watched Ana expertly slipped belts and such filled with knifes, checking her gun was loaded and ready before strapping it to her lower back.

Her hair was tied back harshly, all the stray strands painstakingly pinned out of her face. The multiple pierces that filled her ears were replaced by simple plastic studs and none of her normal jewellery was adorned. She had been the first dressed in the simple navy blue and yellow suit that Hank had made for them and it hugged tightly to her toned frame.

She glanced up as the others padded over and Raven was struck with how comfortable Ana looked dressed like that, in a tight-fitting cat-suit with weapons strapped to her, and could finally see Ana as an agent for some government.

Her glacier eyes were a touch colder, sharper, and her stance was confident and almost aggressive. Raven could picture Ana easily surrounded by bodies and covered in blood, it was different from the stance she had taken to the defend them.

She had been unmoveable then, defensive, but now she was ready to strike, coiled like a cobra, and it almost scared her.

But then Ana smiled as she reached up to adjust the collar of Alex's suit and Raven's fear was gone. She was still Ana, and Raven knew that Ana wouldn't ever hurt them.

"Where's Hank?" Sean asked as he looked around.

"I'm right here,"

Raven glanced up at his tone, it was resigned for some reason, and bit back a gasp. He was blue and furry.

"What happened to you?" Alex blurted out as he stared in disbelief at Hank, automatically ducking out of the way of Ana's chiding hand.

Hank barely glanced at Alex, his gaze—his blue eyes now had a golden undertone, Raven noticed—was fixed on her as he explained that his cure hadn't worked, that it had attacked the cells and turned him into this.

But Raven didn't care, despite how he hurt her the other night, she still cared for him and loved him. It didn't matter to her that he was blue and furry now, but she could tell from the sound of his voice that it mattered to him, could see it as he gripped Erik's throat after he suggested the name 'Beast', and realised that their relationship—still so young and new—was over before it could really begin.

"Let him go Hank," Ana's voice was like ice, cold and cutting, and broke through the anger that surrounded Hank and he released Erik, almost startled that he had been near killing him with one hand.

"I wasn't mocking you," Erik said, his voice hoarse as he rubbed at his throat and Hank looked guilty as he stared at Erik and knew bruises would soon form a collar around his neck.

Hank glanced at Ana and almost flinched away from her look, never before had her eyes been as cold as the glaciers that they resembled. Never had she given any of them such a cold look.

Ana moved so she was almost shielding Erik as she stared unblinking at Hank, most of them forgot that Erik and Ana had survived together because Ana was so friendly with them and didn't automatically move to his side like Raven sometimes did with Charles. But Hank realised in that look she gave him that it didn't matter how much she liked him, how fond she was of him, she would always place Erik—his safety, his happiness, his well-being—ahead of everybody else's accept for Alex maybe.

They had been her friends and family long before the group had come together and slowly became a family.

* * *

It wasn't that Ana minded flying, it's just she didn't like heights and had been young when 9/11 happened. She had always watched too many movies where the planes were crashed or taken over to ever feel safe on a commercial plane.

She had also had the delight of almost plummeting to death when the SHIELD's air-carrier was attacked by Loki's goons.

But despite all of that Ana didn't mind flying, as long as she was in control of the plane.

Which she was not, Hank was flying the plane and didn't trust her word when she had told him she learnt to fly on a lot more advanced planes. She wasn't even co-pilot because there was no room for a co-pilot—a serious under sight on Hank's part.

A warm hand wrapped tightly around hers and she glanced over at Erik. He didn't smile to reassure her, didn't smirk at her obvious—at least to him and Alex—nerves—read fear—and didn't say something stupidly encouraging.

He just held her hand and it was in that moment that Ana realised that whatever happened in Cuba, if she didn't talk Erik away from his war-plans, then she would still follow him.

He wasn't Logan, he wasn't Bucky, he wasn't Steve, but he had become as important as them. She would have walked through Hell and back for those guys, they had been her partners. Erik was her new partner, and she would walk a very dark path with him if he chose too.

She had spent twenty odd years with him, had taught him to defend himself, and had been his confident and such. She had spent more years with Erik then she had with Steve, Bucky and Logan combined.

Ana was cruel, cold, distrusting, jaded and a sadist but she was also loyal to those that earned her loyalty and trust—something that she didn't as readily give as some people thought.

"Whatever happens," she began, ignoring the gazes turning to them. "I will stay with you."

"Ana?" Erik's voice was confused and in a flash he was replaced by the young teen that she had broken out of Auschwitz with, the young boy that had screamed out in rage and grief at the sight of his dead mother and brutally bent metal to his will.

"You're going make a choice soon, Erik," she told him. "Don't follow Shaw's path."

His dark brows furrowed together, a dark cloud settling over his features.

"Kill him, yes. Let him ruin your life? Let him colour your view of the world? No," she cupped his cheek with her free hand. "Don't become Shaw, don't become me."

"You're nothing like him," he hissed, blue eyes flashing with fire.

She just smiled back as she let her hand drop back to her lap.

It was sweet that he actually thought that, that he truly believed that. She was worse then Shaw, at least in his own twisted mind, he was trying to help other mutants while Ana had admitted in the past, and wouldn't be afraid to admit in the future, that as long as the few people she gave a damn about lived and was okay then she would freely damn the rest of the world.

Other people would flinch away from that thought, they would have it but they would never voice it though. That type of thought was heartless and selfish to a criminal degree, but it was true.

Ana had always been selfish, she had just learnt how to be more selfish and heartless through the shit that she had gone through.

* * *

"I FUCKING HATE PLANES!" Ana screamed out as Hank struggled to keep control as they flew—crashed—towards the beach and Alex choked out a laugh.

They could be about to die and of course Ana would find a way to show her displeasure, he thought with half-hysterical amusement as the plane shook madly before with a mighty crash they landed and rolled on the beach.

"Everyone alright?" Charles called out worriedly as Erik finally released his iron grip on the metal of the plane that had kept them in place—lucky bastards.

"Yes, those who are dead, shout out," Ana sneered as she sawed through the belts that kept her strapped to the seats, her knuckles white as she gripped one of her knifes tightly.

Charles threw her a look but she ignored it and clambered her way towards him, it was when she was right in front of him that Alex realised that her hands were shaking slightly and her pupils were so large that only a thin circle of pale blue was visible.

But her grip on her serrated knife didn't falter as she firmly cut through the belts that kept Alex in place.

"Are you alright?" she asked quietly, a soothing and comforting hand brief settling on his shoulder.

"Yeah," Alex startled himself with how shook up his voice sounded and Ana's lips thinned dangerously before she faked a smile, her eyes cold and flat.

"Don't worry," she told him. "I'll make sure everything is alright."

And Alex believed her, like he believed her when she told him she would help him control his new—and frightening—power.

* * *

Azazel could be a cold hearted killer at times—he was Shaw's assassin after all—but he didn't take joy in killing children and that's what the boys fighting them were.

Simply children—though the boy that could throw around red disks and fire burning beams was nearer to being a man then the others—and he didn't honestly want to kill them.

So he let himself be distracted by the sudden appearance of Shaw—no matter how wrong his gut shouted at him that it was wrong—and was almost taken down by the blue furred guy—he seemed to be a new addition—but was taken down by the woman he remembered staking to the floor in that Compound.

Her icy eyes reminded him of the cold and harsh winters in the Soviet. She pinned him with her weight, his arms caged to his body by her long legs, a knife had almost taken off his pointed tip of his tail and another was pressed tightly against his throat, barely breaking the skin.

This wasn't a child like the boys, this was a woman that could most likely smile as she drew her knife across his throat with ease that spoke of her blood stained past.

So this was what it felt like to meet the gaze of an assassin, to stare at the face of your killer and see your death reflected back in their eyes.

"Comrade," she spoke softly, "your boss is most likely dead so I would stop fighting if I was you unless you want to join him, then I'm happy to fulfil your desire."

"My dear lady," he attempted to charm her and only got an amused quirk of her mouth in return—it did nothing to warm her gaze. "I like living a lot more then I like Shaw."

"Good answer," she told him before she twisted and threw the blade that had once been against his throat and pierced through the wing of Angel—she screamed as she crashed down on the sandy beach. "You shoot fire-balls at my boys again Angel, I will hack off the wings and mount them on my wall."

Angel said nothing in return, she was hunched over and carefully touching her almost severed wing as she sobbed.

"Bloody hell," the ginger boy—the one that Azazel remembered near-crawling towards this assassin above him that night so long ago it seemed—said as he stood gingerly up and brushed off sand on his practical suit—why Shaw wanted them to dress up like they were going to a party was beyond Azazel's understanding. "That was scary, amazing but scary."

Anastasia, as Azazel remembered Shaw calling her, lifted herself up from her place on his chest and offered him a hand.

"You attack my boys and I'll kill you," she promised as he wrapped his hand around hers and she helped him up.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he told her, hissing out a pained sound as he gingerly moved his tail.

"Good," she barred her teeth at him. "Because I think I'm going to like you and I would hate to kill you."

But she would, Azazel knew it.

Shaw made a huge mistake by letting this woman slip through his fingers.


	12. Chapter 12

Charles had thought he had understood the depths of Erik's fear and anger, he thought he could understand the parallels that Erik was drawing but in his heart he felt that they were wrong.

America wouldn't fall to the low of Hitler and his Nazis, right? Mutants wouldn't have to fear like the Jews had too.

But then he would remember the fractured memories he had been able to catch from Ana's mind. Thin fearful faces peering up at her—her children, her mind screamed out—from a horrible camp, of horrible and cruel machines that had been used against their kind. Killer robots made specially to kill them with their government having the full okay and knowledge of what was happening.

Lists filled with names of mutants, identifying each of them and their power. Raids on their school, parents trying to make their children stop being mutants or completely shunning them. The so-called cure and the riots that broke out because of it.

And Charles could see, could see that Erik was right, and something in him felt like it was breaking.

"_He was an optimistic fool," _Ana had once called Xavier—his future-self—in the same breathe as calling him a genius.

Peace was something that Ana had never seen mutants truly enjoy, she had seen people hate and abuse them for no other reason than they were different. She had almost sold her soul as Hope in attempt to keep them safe and had _died_ to defend them.

She had seen mutants rage against normal people and respected them for it though it hardly ever made things better for it. She had been disappointed in Xavier for not fighting as hard as he could, for naively believing that they could have peace with people that hated and feared them, for not seeing the depths that people could go to against things they feared and hated.

She had personally seen the depth of cruelty that people did without a care, and she knew that them just keeping their heads low wouldn't change anything.

Ana had been called cold before, but Charles knew that she burnt hotter than an erupting volcano when it came to mutants. She had seen many injustices in her life and yet it was the mutant's injustice that had truly touched her and changed her.

And truly, Charles was more afraid of what she would do to keep their kind safe, to protect them, then whatever Erik would do in order to stop another holocaust from happening.

Erik's cruelty had boundaries, he knew when to stop and he felt guilt for things. Ana though, she had been broken down, guilt had been beaten out of her, and her cruelty knew no boundaries as she would mercilessly slaughter hundreds to protect just a small group of mutants—Charles _knew_ that, knew that without having to constantly reading her mind, because he _knew_ her.

Cuba would decide everything, what happened on the island would decide the path that Ana walked. And Charles hoped to god that Erik didn't break away from them, because he truly feared what Ana would do when she followed him—because she would always follow Erik, she had spent twenty-years by his side and hadn't given a hint of leaving him.

(No matter how much she had loved Xavier's school, no matter how much she had cared for the students, she would follow Erik and be branded a villain for doing terrible things in the name of protecting them)

Laws, morals, things like that meant little to Ana and he doubted there was anything that she would consider too far if it could help mutants.

* * *

His hands were trembling, his head felt like someone had pushed a coin straight through it—he could have lived happily without knowing how that felt—but he stumbled out of the wreck and stared around him.

Raven was knelt next to Hank and staring up at the red-skinned teleporter with suspicious eyes while the man just smiled at her when he wasn't busy tying his silky red tie around his wounded tail—his smile for some reason reminded him of Ana.

Angel was crumbled on the sand, her hands and back stained with blood and her wings nowhere in sight as she shook in pain with the other gentlemen, Riptide, standing protectively over her.

Ana was sat almost lazily on the beach with Sean and Alex either side of her, she must have felt his gaze as she glanced up before turning to the wrecked submarine as Erik floated out with Shaw's dead body in front of him bound in metal.

"Today our fighting stops," Erik declared and all eyes were drawn to him. "Take off you blinders, brothers and sisters, our enemy is out there," he waved towards the fleet of ships. "I feel their guns moving in the water—Soviets, Americans, humans. They are preparing to fire on us. Tell me I'm wrong."

Charles sent a brief look towards Moira and she was off, dashing towards their downed plane.

It was an explosion of noise as hundreds of missiles were sent flying to them and Erik stopped them.

For a brief moment he thought that would be it before the missiles slowly began to turn around.

"Erik, you said yourself we are the better men. This is the time to prove it," Charles said franticly as Ana almost lazily raised herself to her feet. "There are thousands of men on those ships. Good, honest, innocent men! They're just following orders."

"I've been at the mercy of men just following orders," Erik said bitterly. "Never again."

"Erik! Release them!" Charles shouted as they slowly began to head back towards the ships that fired them though Erik ignored his shouts.

Just as Charles thought he would have to tackle Erik to make him stop, Ana spoke.

"Trying to out-do me?" Ana asked almost blandly and Erik froze, the missiles likewise freezing in their path. "I've never started a war before, well done. You've out done me."

"I don't want to be like you," Erik near whispered and Charles stared at them in confusion as Ana walked to his side.

"Then slowly put those missiles down," Ana ordered.

"They will never leave us in peace," Erik said to her. "They've made their move."

"I know," Ana said simply. "That's why I'm your countermove."

Slowly, too slowly, the missiles drifted down to the waters and then under them.

"Charles?" Ana glanced over, her glacier eyes almost remorseful. "I need you to project both my thoughts and voice into everyone's head, can you do that?"

"I think so," Charles said as he slowly made his way towards her.

"Good," she smiled before shooting a look at Erik. "Take that stupid helmet off before I take it off for you."

Erik hesitantly did as he was told and Charles reached up to touch Ana's temples.

"This is going to be unpleasant," she warned him, a serious cast to her face. "Are you ready?"

He swallowed and nodded tightly as he connected each mind on the beach, each mind on the ships, to his and Ana's.

"I am Reaper,"

_Screams, blood, cooling corpses, Ana's face cast in shadow. _

"Some of you have heard of me and what I've done, some of you are just learning,"

_Bodies of men and women appeared with Ana standing over them. _

"I have lived through many things,"

_A bloodcurdling scream, Ana's scream, echoed through their minds. Fast memories of her being cut open, her limbs being hacked off and her organs being removed while she was awake and aware. Numerous memories of her being shot, stabbed, blown up, and drowned filtered through. _

"I have seen many injustices,"

_Crying, women and children. Women throwing themselves at walls and bolted doors as gas poured in and choked them. A mass grave filled with bloated bodies. Prisoners fighting over scraps of food. Nazis forcing themselves on Jewish women. Beatings of so many people while hateful words are spit. _

"I have deal personally with some horrors,"

_A man trying to force himself on her, her fighting back and a flash of a blade plunging into her chest and then into his. Ana's terrified and angry cries echoing. _

"And no one has touched my heart like this people have. You would call them monsters and freaks, I call them family and friends,"

_Erik bending metal, Raven changing her form, Sean breaking glass with a single whistle, Angel flying, Darwin's head in a tank, Alex firing beams and rings of red plasma, and others that they had never met just quick looks at their powers with their faces shadowed._

"I will protect them, I will hunt down anyone that harms them. You cannot run away from Death, you cannot run away from the Reaper. You have made your move by attempting to attack them, I have given you a warning and a promise. This isn't an idle threat, I will destroy anyone to protect them."

Ana gently removed his hands from her temples and stared hard at the ships.

"Are they leaving?" she asked after a moment and Charles pulled his mind away from where it was replaying her memories.

"Yes," Erik answered before Charles could as he felt the ships turning away. "This isn't the end."

"I never said or thought it was," she answered, her eyes cold and hard as she stared at the retreating ships. "But it will make them pause, make them hesitate to act against us and that gives us time. They will not leave us in peace even if we do nothing against them, and they will never stop hunting us if they can make it out as us as the aggressive party because the public will demand blood. This war will have to be subtle and kept from the public eye as much as possible."

"We shouldn't have to hide to please them," Erik argued and Ana glanced over him.

"Why would we ever hide?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. "We're mutant and proud."

She suddenly punched Erik hard in the arm making him wince.

"If you ever preach like that again, I'm going cut you a new asshole, got it?" she threatened and he nodded, almost meekly under her glare.

"Good," she almost smiled as she turned to the others. "Today is the start. Erik was right, they have made their first move, but violence can't be the only answer or they'll destroy us, mercilessly and ruthlessly, and no one will care really.

We will need someone who can calm the public, that can reason with them, reason with those who fear us and get in their head really," a ghost of a smile curved her lips. "But we will need those that will make the hard choices, remove unmoveable and dangerous threats. We need to work together, do we have an understanding?"

"Yes,"

"Good," Ana said decidedly. "Let's get off this stupid island then."

* * *

"If you weren't here," Charles suddenly asked after staring at Ana's reading form for a few moments—she sat crossed legged on a coffee table and was absently reading one of his books. "What would have happened in Cuba?"

"Does it matter?" she glanced up with curious pale eyes. "It didn't happen."

"I don't know," Charles admitted. "Will you tell me?"

"What could have happened is the past and now the future is uncertain to us all," she told him. "Don't dwell on the past."

How incredibly hypercritic of a woman that was doing everything to stop her past—their future—from happening.

"And you're okay with that?" Charles asked, unable to understand how at ease she seemed with not knowing what was in the future.

"People weren't meant to know their own futures," Ana said. "We'd all try too hard to stop bad things from happening and screw it up worse. It's better this way."

"You really think that?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered simply. "By the way, don't be surprised if you see Raven and Azazel together a lot. It seems they are 'bonding'."

It took a moment for what she meant to click in his mind and he spluttered.

"He's too old for her!" he immediately protested.

"At least he has enough experience to make it pleasurable for her," she idly said and Charles glared at her.

"You!" Charles didn't know how to finish and from the quirk of Ana's lips, she knew it too.

"I call dibs on being god-mother to their little spawn," she added.

Charles had the unexplainable urge to throw his hands in the air as he left, searching for Raven for a serious talk.


	13. Chapter 13

Charles rested his chin on his laced fingers as he watched Moira drive away, knowing that as soon as she fell asleep that night that everything she knew about where they were would be gone, everything that they had gone through together would be forgotten.

"I could have loved her," he mused to his silent audience and he could feel Erik glance at him, concern in his blue gaze, while Ana would remain unmoveable as she glared down at the chess board—checkers she could play, chess? Nope.

"I'm sorry, Charles," Erik was actually sincere.

"I'm not," was Ana's unapologetic statement and Charles didn't even flicker a glare at her.

Ana hadn't liked Moira from the get go—sure, she respected that Moira was one of the few female CIA agents and that Moira didn't fear them or think them as freaks—and Charles, perhaps a tad naively, thought it was because she knew that Moira would have to leave them to protect them and thus didn't attempt to be close to a woman that would one day leave.

"How harsh, Ana," Erik commented as he impatiently moved Ana's pieces for her. "Even for you."

"I'm not known to being a sympathetic ear," Ana said drily, resting her cheek on one fist as she watched Erik basically played himself. "I leave that for Charles and your lovely self."

Charles couldn't stop the snort of laughter that left him at the thought of Erik as a sympathetic ear, and he wasn't that surprised when small metal pawn hit him in that back of the head. Ana laughed and Erik huffed and muttered to himself.

"Some friends you are,"

* * *

Alex sat on the ground—his arms encircled his bent legs—and simply stared at the simply stone marker that had been placed in an out of the way place of the mansion grounds.

Ana never made noise when she walked—expect when she was in heels or actually, consciously, wanted to be heard—but he had been with her since he was fifteen and learnt to almost feel her approach so he was aware when she near-drifted across the grass to stop just behind him.

There was an almost physical hush between, a silences that shouldn't be properly broken.

"Does Charles know you've put this here?" he asked, his voice low.

"Why would you think I put this here?" she asked in return, her voice equally as low.

Alex would have smiled, could have smiled, if it was anything else but he couldn't, not when he stared at that marker.

_Darwin_

'_Adapt to Survive'_

_October 20__th__ 1962_

Glared back at him in firm, unforgiving, black lettering and it was like a punch to the gut. There was no date of birth, because they hadn't known and hadn't thought to ask and now he was gone.

"Only you would put something like this up," Alex's voice was almost sharp, a tone he had never taken with Ana before.

He felt her shift more then heard and thus didn't jerk away as her warmth settled on his back and her arms looped around his neck. Her caramel hair tickled his cheek when the breeze caught it.

"I'm sorry," she said and Alex knew she was sincere. "I thought it would be good to have something to remember him by, did I get it wrong?"

Alex wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry at that because it was questions like that which made Alex realise that she was broken, broken long before she found him and stopped him becoming his own type of broken. The woman that saved him from being broken was broken herself.

He leaned his head back and rested it against her shoulder, staring up at the cloudy sky and letting her hold his weight.

"It's fine," he told her and the slightest tension in her arms disappeared. "It was just a surprise."

"I'm sorry," she repeated and he almost smiled.

"Sean thinks you can't say sorry unless Charles makes you," Alex commented and he could feel her soft laughter vibrate through them.

"That's kind of true," she muttered, her breathe warm against his ear. "I'm not the remorseful type."

"You're kind of a bitch really," he agreed and she hummed.

She didn't falter under his weight, didn't sink back, just held him steady like she always had.

* * *

"The mind-reader keeps glaring at me," Azazel announced as he sat next to her, stealing one of her chips and she absently went to stab his hand with her fork.

He was quick to pull it back, a chip in hand, and a teeth-barring grin.

"Perhaps if you didn't call him the 'mind-reader' then he wouldn't glare at you," she advised, knowing that wasn't the reason but it was something that would get on Charles' nerves.

"I will keep calling him mind-reader as long as he glares at me," Azazel sniffed as he told his fellow assassin.

Azazel was the first to make himself home with the X-men, he already knew he had a kindred spirit in Ana and the young woman, Raven, was simply beautiful—though it was obvious that the men around her hadn't understood or appreciated her natural beauty—and he knew he would have fun getting her to open herself up to him in every way possible.

"Then it will be a never ending cycle of glares and minder-reader," Ana sighed almost dramatically and Azazel grinned again—this lot was much better then Shaw, no need to be dressed up all the time, and actually joked properly with each other.

"I have a feeling that someone is behind his little dislike of me," he said pointedly and she glanced at him, glacier eyes wide in attempt to look innocent, and he snorted. "Innocent looks don't work on people like us."

She dropped all attempts and simply smirked at him, glacier eyes warmed to an almost oceanic colour in her merriment.

"I may have implied that you and Raven were 'bonding'," she shrugged and Azazel chuckled lowly, his tail drifted carelessly behind him—recovered from the horror that she had put it through.

"But we're not," Azazel said, amused.

"Yet," Ana added and Azazel had to agree, Raven was certainly someone he could see himself 'bonding' with.

"Jealous?" he questioned, wondering if that was the reason behind the mind-reader's glare.

"Brother," she answered and he almost winced. "Break her heart, and I'll make a bracelet out of your teeth, understand?"

"Understood,"

"Want to help me do a jail-break?"

"Why not?"

Ah, the wonders of friendships with kindred spirits.

* * *

Emma wasn't actually that bothered by being captured, sure it was boring staring at the same walls, but it was actually interesting peeking into the agents' thoughts—it was especially amusing to listen to the ones that knew that she was here and what she could do as they immediately beat themselves up after thinking about something important—and she wasn't tortured for information.

It was through her gift that she found out that Shaw was dead.

It wasn't something that actually surprised Emma, she had seen into that man's, Erik's, mind and knew if he didn't then his friend would. That woman had the same eyes as Azazel, cold eyes that put a shiver down her spine as they were the eyes of a killer.

Emma knew she wouldn't miss Shaw much, he only saw her for her gift and as a serving girl—really? Sending her to get ice for his drink? Who the hell did he think he was?

She heard the sound of Azazel porting in seconds before his familiar Russian tones filter through her mind and sat up on the hard cot. She blinked in surprise when she saw that the red-Russian wasn't alone.

"Emma, wasn't it?" the other woman asked, a ghost of a smile on her face and her eyes—a paler and colder colour than Emma's own—cool and detached.

Her mind was curiously controlled, muted almost in a way that meant she was used to mind-readers and didn't like them rummaging through her head.

"Yes," Emma nodded as she slipped her legs off the cot and let her feet rest on the floor.

"I'm Ana," the darker haired woman introduced herself. "How would you like a new job?"

"I think I might like that," Emma smiled as she stood and Ana smirked back as she reached out with a hand.

Emma was almost sure that she was making a deal with someone that could be worse than Shaw, but at least this Ana had others that would reel her in and would actually see Emma as a person.

So Emma took the outstretched hand and Azazel puffed them away.

* * *

"You broke her out of the CIA," Erik tone was flat and Ana was eerily reminded of a disapproving father from where she and Azazel was sat in front of the two disapproving men and circled by the other members of the household.

"You broke a wanted criminal out of the CIA," Charles' tone was pitched higher in disbelief and Ana wondered if this was what it was like to be tag-teamed by parents.

"We didn't actually break anything," Ana offered, catching Alex's smirk and Sean's grin from the corner of her eye.

"No, you just casually teleported in and out with a WANTED criminal!" Charles' voice was pinched with almost equal incredibly and simmering anger. "From the CIA!"

Emma, said wanted criminal, leaned back in her seat and crossed her long legs as she smirked at her fellow mind-reader.

"We did it quietly and didn't even kill, let alone hurt, anyone," Azazel added as if that made it better.

Judging from the reddening to Charles' cheeks, it didn't.

"Grounded," Erik cut in before Charles could go on into a long disapproving rant.

Heads snapped towards the metal-bender and jaws dropped in shock, and some cases in mounting hilarity.

"W-what?" Ana spluttered because surely she had heard wrong.

"You two are grounded," Erik smoothly raised an eyebrow when they protested. "And are no longer allowed to be left alone together."

"I've never been grounded in my life!" Ana protested—'That explains so much,' Hank muttered to Alex's agreement. "I'm older then you two, you can't do this to us!"

"We can and just have," Erik disagreed with Charles nodding strongly at himself.

"I can't believe you pissed off Mum and Dad," Sean snorted and Ana had to snort herself at the looks that crossed Erik's and Charles' face at Sean's words.

Ana wondered how Charles would react when he realised he was Mum and smirked as she purposely let that thought be loud just to see Charles' face—priceless and almost worth being grounded. Almost.

* * *

Raven gritted her teeth as the hair on the back of her neck stood up, a warning that either Azazel or Ana had entered the room. She would bet it was Azazel because Ana actually greeted people—sometimes anyway.

She reframed from jumping as a red finger trailed down her arm, contrasting greatly against her blue skin.

"Pity that you hid such beauty the first time we met," Azazel commented almost idly.

"The first time we met, you were following a mad man after killing dozens of agents. Stabbed and pinned my friend to the floor and watched as your boss kill another of my friends," Raven glanced at him with a coldness that she mimicked from Ana. "Sorry if I wasn't that inclined to show you my 'beauty'."

"Would it make you feel better if I say sorry?" Azazel's voice was simply curious and Raven rolled her eyes.

"No," she answered firmly and expanded on her answer at his curious look. "Because you wouldn't mean it, you would be saying it just to get on my good side."

"But it would work, yes?" Azazel asked, his head cocked slightly to the side and Raven bit back a smile.

He was oddly endearing, perhaps because he reminded her a bit of Ana, and he was the first man to call her beautiful when she was in her natural form—apart from Erik but that didn't really count in her mind. He was a man that was comfortable with his mutation, who didn't care that the mundane society wouldn't accept him, a confident man at ease with himself.

And wasn't that appealing after Hank's self-loathing and timid nature over his mutation—made worse because of his defective cure. It was nice for a man to make her, her real self, feel beautiful.

"No,"

Azazel just smirked, obviously having caught the smile she had attempted to hide and that had only encouraged him.

It was then that Charles walked in, a glare automatically falling on to Azazel, which made the teleporter amused for some reason.

"Mind-reader," he greeted almost happily.

Charles actually just grunted at him with a nod and Raven stared at her brother in wonder—that was the rudest that she had ever seen her brother act.

What was going on? And why did Raven have a feeling that Ana had a hand in it somehow?


	14. Chapter 14

_In life, there was one certainty. One way or another, you will die, most likely unexpectedly, and life is over._

_Or at least that's how things were supposed to go._

_Of course I had to be the odd case, the one that differed from the norm. When I die, I live again then I die, and then I live again._

_Fun, huh? Not really, dying isn't a very nice thing to experience once and so far I've died three times. This is my fourth life, or maybe it's my third and I just dreamt about being a pokémon trainer?_

_Sometimes I can't tell, sometimes I wonder if this is all just a fucked-up dream I'm having and I'm really just stuck in a coma in some hospital. Sometimes I wish that was all it was, but I doubt it._

_The people I find myself surrounded with, the people I have come to care about, are too real, too different, to be nothing but a dream. _

_And if this is all a dream, what does that say about me?_

_That I've always wanted to be a murderer? That I'm actually one of the cruellest bitches in the world? That if I was given a chance in my first life, and was actually a healthy person, I would have turned into a killer?_

_A serial killer like the Wests and such? Would I be caught? Or would I have become a myth like Jack the Ripper? A ghost in the dark? A phantom of murder?_

_Sometimes I wonder, I muse on my faded memories of my first life. Already mangled so I lost my name, and fading with what seems like every day as new one replace them. Sometimes I worry that I'll forget my mother's face, and sometimes I wonder if that's a good thing or not._

_No mother would approve of their child being a murderer. Some could argue that I'm a survivor too, but I'm sure that not every survivor turns into a cold-hearted murderer._

_Gods, I sound like a moody bitch, huh?_

_All woe is me, I've become a murderer and I miss my Mum. Well, I have and I do, so bite me. _

_Sometimes I wonder, when I die this time, and I will die because everyone always dies, where will I end up? Which book, movie or game that I loved will I end up in? Will I become a demi-god and have to fight monsters out to kill?—a way to be a bloodthirsty bitch without actually killing people._

_Or will I end up in Skyrim as the Dragonborn or some random person that will get involved somehow with the Dragonborn and the whole civil war thing?_

_Will I end up in Thedas? Become a Grey Warden and fight the Blight? Or the Champion that will lose both her siblings, one to death and one to something depending on what I chose? Or a completely random person that finds herself involved with everything._

_Will I end up if a future Chicago and get put into a faction? Will I be brainwashed or will I be a Divergent? _

_Will I wake up in Panem? Fight in the Hunger Games and slaughter innocent children for the amusement of some rich snobs? _

_Will I end up watching the horribly sickening and fucked-up love affair of a sparkling vampire and a girl that really should know better? Or worse, will I end up in that girl's body? Danger magnet, here I come._

_Will I end up in Albion? Watch my sister be killed and almost killed myself by a madman that I will spend the next twenty years attempting, and finally succeeding, in stopping? Or will I be her daughter? Force to dethrone my mad brother and fight against the Darkness?_

_Will I end up in a world where witches are real? Where Hansel and Gretel are kick-ass witch killers with awesome weapons?_

_Where will I end up? Who will I be? These questions filter through my mind when I fight and I think is this how I'm going to die?_

_Morbid thoughts, huh? I guess I should be happy that I get to experience more life than most people, huh?_

* * *

"You told Charles what?" Raven asked, her voice flat unlike the shrill tone that she had half-expected would come from her own mouth.

Ana didn't even glance up from where she was rummaging through a new pile of jeans, a pin cushion tied to her wrist and a needle sticking out of her lips—a long black cotton thread dangling from the needle's eye.

"I told him nothing," she muttered around the needle as she attacked the stitching of one of the legs with a pair scissors—she seemed to have something against the bell-bottoms as she always took them in so they were fit almost tightly against her legs, it looked uncomfortable frankly, and Raven didn't know why Ana bothered as she wasn't the most patient or neatest sower. "I simply said that you were bonding with Azazel, which is true, and if he took another meaning into my words then then it's not my fault."

"You told him that you called dibs on being GODMOTHER!" Raven's voice raised almost dangerously at the end and almost threatened to break. "How is that not your fault?"

"I said that?" Ana glanced over, eyebrow raised. "That doesn't sound like me, I hate children remember?"

That actually made her pause, Ana had never hidden her dislike—Raven refused to believe that she actually _hated_ children—of children a secret. If there was one thing that would always make Ana flinch was a child calling out to her cheerfully, so it didn't make sense that she would say she would be godmother to any child, even if was one of their children.

But then again, it was the sort of thing that Ana would say just to screw with Charles' mind. But Raven knew that Ana would keep telling half-truths or asking a question to her question so Raven changed subject.

"Why are you pushing me towards Azazel?" she asked, alright maybe demanded.

Ana hissed as she stabbed her finger with the needle and looked up at her with a frown.

"When have I ever pushed you to do anything?" Ana asked in return as she sucked off the blood from her finger—small pin-prick already healed—and returned to attempt at sowing.

"Fine," Raven could admit that Ana hadn't ever pushed her into doing anything, yet. "Why do you seem to like the idea as us as a couple? You wasn't like this—"

"When you were with Hank," Ana finished. "Hank, sweetheart that he is, has too many issues and hang-ups for a healthy relationship at the moment. You shouldn't have to wait around for him to grow up emotionally, pull his head out of his arse, and realise that being a mutant wasn't the end of the world or something that needed a fucking cure!"

Ana had never really spoke about Hank so hotly before, it startled Raven frankly.

"Anyway," Ana cleared her throat almost uncomfortably, obviously reacting to the look on Raven's face. "Azazel actually sees you and knows you're beautiful because of you and not what image that you project. He would be good for you."

"He could have killed you and did watch as Shaw killed Darwin," Raven pointed out as Ana seemed to have forgotten that little bit.

"Please," Ana waved one hand, "it's almost a thing of respect for assassins to attempt to kill each other, and it means that the other recognises the threat." Ana glanced up at Raven unconvinced face and sighed. "When we are trained, we are broken down until we are barely recognisable as human and built up from scratch."

Raven didn't like Ana's tone, it was flat and had none of Ana's normal inflictions in it.

"They teach us that bonds, relationships, having people that love you and you love in return, is a weakness and that people will use them to get to you. But no matter how good we're trained or how much we believe in that lesson, we're still a bit human and thus will always crave for people to love us, to love them, to have bonds and relationships.

So when we fall in love or we come to care about people, we protect them fiercely and ruthlessly. We would burn the world to find them if they were taken and we would do anything to make sure they were safe from harm," Ana glanced up then and met her eyes squarely, her voice gentle in a way that Raven had never heard. "Perhaps I want you to experience a love like that Raven, to have someone that will treasure you above all else and keep you safe."

Raven had thrown herself in her romance with Hank—a romance that ended before it could really start—and was thus more cautious with any growing affections that she had for Azazel.

If they had a relationship—something that Ana seemed certain was going to happen—then she was going to make a strong relationship that would last between them by taking her time to really know him and for him to really know her.

No more rushing blindly.

* * *

"You think I'll love her," it was a statement, not a question, and Ana hadn't even glanced up when he puffed—a term that he wasn't too happy about when she told him how she referred to his teleporting in her head—onto her bed.

Azazel stretched out like a lazy cat, dark top rising up his toned red-skinned stomach, and simple stared down at where she was still sowing away.

"I hope that you'll love her," she corrected, grimacing at the state of her stitches.

Her Design and Technology Textiles' teacher would be ashamed of her.

"Godmother?" he asked, helping her hold the jeans so she could get a better view at what she had done and what she needed to do.

"I'm dubbing them Nightcrawler," she glanced at him with a quirk of her lips. "They will of course take after their mother in looks, though getting your dark hair, and will teleport like daddy."

"And normal children are considered a handful," he shook his head and she laughed. "You'll protect them."

She sobered and looked up at him, his statement—always statements really—was serious.

"Of course," she answered just as seriously, seeing in his gaze that he was picturing it already—Raven as his lover, Raven heavy with his child, his own blue-skinned dark haired and golden eyed baby—and knew that he would never go for it unless he knew for a fact that there would always be someone there to protect them if something happened to him.

They were assassins, they didn't often have long lives and their deaths were often violent. Ana would never have that—or not for a very long time at least—so she was the perfect person in his eyes to protect whatever future he made with Raven as she understood.

"Will they call you Aunty?" he teased as she threw a scrap of denim in his face.

* * *

Sean tilted his head to the side and squinted, and yet it was still there. It could be Emma messing with his mind, he supposed.

"I'm not playing with your mind," Emma spoke up, blowing softly on her slowly drying nails. "I have better things to do, like finishing the coats of my nails. I think this shade of blue is lovely."

"Matches your eyes," Angel absently agreed as she flipped for a magazine at the same time that Charles chidingly said; "We don't mess with others' minds at all Emma," from where he was sat playing chess with Erik.

"You truly are a bore Charles," Emma complained lightly. "And Sean may need some tweaking if he can't believe his own eyes."

"It's just," Sean struggled to explain himself. "Ana doesn't seem to the cuddly sleeper type."

Ana had for once fallen asleep in front of everyone, she was entangled with Alex while said man casually read a book that was held in one hand while another was wrapped firmly around her slim waist.

She had buried her head into his shoulder and was practically using Alex as both bed and pillow. Her arms were held awkwardly, one tucked under Alex's back—Sean was certain that she would wake up with no feeling in that arm—and the other tucked close to her chest.

Alex didn't seem at all bothered by the fact a grown woman, a woman that was taller than him with or without her rarely worn heels, was laying on him as he read his book.

"Shh," Raven glared at him—her natural golden eyes making her glare more effective—from where she sat next to Azazel, her bare blue feet on his lap. "You'll wake her up."

Erik snorted, loudly, and said; "You have obviously never seen her sleep."

"She's not a light-sleeper then?" Azazel eyed Ana curiously. "Most assassins' sleep lightly in case someone tries to kill them in their sleep."

"She sleeps deeper than dead," Erik said before clapping his hands loudly making the others flinch or wince as they half-expected Ana to pop up and tear Erik a new one for waking her up.

She didn't even twitch.

"She's going to be killed in her sleep," Azazel declared, looking a tad disappointed in Ana, and Erik smirked before he used his power to send a small little pawn flying at Ana.

One arm snapped out, somehow with a knife in hand, swiped at the pawn before it could even get close to her. And yet, Ana was still asleep as Erik pulled the pawn back and the blade slid back home under her sleeve and her arm was once more tucked close to her chest.

"She can do many things in her sleep," Alex informed them and Sean was, frankly, impressed.

"Huh," was all Azazel said, but Sean was sure the red-skinned man was just as impressed as Sean was.


	15. Chapter 15

There was one space in the house that was solely Ana's, something that Charles had set-up after they had moved in and a result of his little mind wandering mishap.

He had learnt that in her first life, her earliest and most faded memories, she had wanted to be a photographer so he gave her a dark room of her own—which she put to use as well as the camera that she had picked up during her time in Europe.

The smell of chemicals reminded her of simpler times, easier times, when she was less jaded, more naïve, and the worse thing she had ever killed was a particularly large spider.

She could easily go through the same routine that she had done a thousand times when she was at college as she developed her own film and then enlarged them onto photo paper and almost forget herself.

But that didn't mean she was unaware of things around her.

"Can I help you, Charles?" she asked as she carefully placed a picture of Azazel and Raven on the drying rack.

"You're good at this," he commented as he looked at the array of photos that she had done, all catching glimpses of their lives.

"Just don't ask me to do borders," she said drily, a quirk to her mouth visible in the red light. "I could never get them right so I don't bother anymore."

"Borders?" he asked curiously.

"When you turn in your final pieces at the end of a project, you're meant to have a perfect white border around your photo. Something that I'm half sure is impossible as no one could get it right," she shrugged as she idly placed another photo from the stop into the wash.

"It's strange to see you passionate about something," he couldn't help saying and she glanced over her shoulder, her pale eyes looked strange and colourless under the red light.

"Are you saying I'm not a passionate person?" she asked and he shook his head.

"I meant it's strange for you to be passionate about a peaceful thing," he clarified and she laughed.

"I guess it is," she agreed.

* * *

The Maximoff family had always been gossiped about really since Ms Maximoff had moved into the small house while heavily pregnant and no husband or boyfriend in sight. In the years that followed, the gossip mostly died down until recently.

The Maximoff house looked normal from the outside though there was newly made worn lines in the welcome mat which some of the neighbours wonder how they possible appeared seemingly overnight as well as the rather sudden and numerous slamming of the door for apparently no reason and the number of broken things that Ms Maximoff threw out had suddenly gone through the roof.

Interesting enough that had only started a few months back when the Maximoff's twins turned twelve.

So more eyes then normal was turned to the Maximoff house and noted when a blue beetle pulled up outside the house.

* * *

Ana stepped out of her car and made sure to lock it before she started to walk to the Maximoff's house.

She wasn't one of those that carelessly left her car unlocked, she had come from a time when crime was very much in your face and you didn't trust others easily. She also didn't want to find out what Peter Maximoff could do to her unlocked car—she had waited years to get a beetle like Herbie and she wasn't going to let it be totalled by a speedster preteen.

It was kind of strange to be going to see another Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch then the ones that had she known, but these two were Erik's kids—even if he didn't know it—and she was going to help them out, get them enrolled in Charles' brain-child of a school, and help them with the powers—hopefully find a way to keep Peter occupied that didn't have anything or little to do with stealing junk and maybe more to do with stealing government plans for the mutants?

(Sometimes she really questioned Charles' genius when he didn't think it was a bad idea for children to be around people like Azazel, Emma and herself—she would have added Riptide, but the fact of the matter was he didn't do much and seemed content to be in either Azazel's, Angel's or Emma's shadow which was the littlest bit creepy)

She glanced at the windows, taking in the closed blinds and curtains, and guessed that Wanda's power was mostly out of control—she was surprised that Wanda had kept it contained to the house, but then Wanda was still young and only really had her powers a few months at best.

Wanda also most likely didn't have any traumatic events happening in her life to make her unlock all her power early—like Jean Grey would one day experience.

Mutant powers normally slowly unlocked themselves, letting the body adapt to the new things it could do. Sometimes they came all at once, causing harm to those mutants and those around them, and that made it difficult for them to control.

Peter most likely always had been a faster than most people and it was possible, he didn't notice just how fast he was slowly becoming until his body realised that he could held it. Wanda's power would be different, hers came from her mind and thus would show itself differently until it finally manifested itself.

She rapped sharply on the wooden door and waited for Ms Maximoff to answer.

* * *

Helena Maximoff had been slowly considering that she was going mad and that her children weren't doing completely strange and unreal things, then she would remember their father and how he could bend and move metal with his mind and know it was real.

She was slowly getting to her wits end as she didn't know what to do with her children. She couldn't exactly ask anyone for help as the twins would most likely be snapped up by some Government and turn them into weapons or experiments—something she would never allow to happen to her children.

So she did all she could to hide what they could do, kept the blinds and curtains closed, attempted to keep Peter from running off and actually stealing something like he had begun to threat to as he was so bored apparently, keep Wanda from braining her brother with the various things that she could suddenly move with her mind and threw out all the things that Wanda ended up breaking without raising too much interest from neighbours—why did she have to pick such a nosy neighbour to move in to?

Of course, she should have realised that people would find out sometime as she was also keeping the twins from school—she already had dealt with a concerned school respective.

Helena knew the moment she opened the door to a pretty young woman on the other side that she hadn't been careful enough.

The woman wasn't dressed in a suit or anything that screamed out Government as she was wearing strangely fitted jeans with a hint of a t-shirt seen under a leather coat, her car was rather colourfully and would stand out in memory. But it was how she stood, how she smiled, that made the hair on the back of Helena's neck stand up and made her realise that this was some strange woman asking for directions or something.

* * *

"Ms Maximoff?" Ana inquired though she already knew who the woman was, with dark hair tugged back out of her tired face, shadows under her eyes—stress must have really gotten to her.

Frankly Ana was impressed that Ms Maximoff actually attempted to help her children and not simply hand them over to some government. Mutants weren't even thought of as a real possibility at the moment.

"I'm Ana James," she introduced herself. "I would like to speak with you about your children."

That was the wrong thing to say, Ana realised as Ms Maximoff's eyes went wild with fear and panic and she automatically placed her hand between the door and the threshold as the other woman moved to slam it.

Ana couldn't stop the hiss that escaped from gritted teeth as the audible sound of the bones in her hands, mostly her fingers, snapping and crunching under the force made Ms Maximoff fling the door open with a horrified look on her face.

Ana grimaced at the state of her fingers and knew that she had to manually straighten some of her fingers so they healed properly—forcing the healing to do everything just made the pain worse and Ana didn't actually like pain.

Ana had never been a mother, no matter how much she may have acted like before, and the idea of having her own children—having a tiny little life looking at her for everything, depending on her to survive, to teach how to be a proper person—scared the shit out of her.

But she knew _mothers_, she would always remember the look of deep fierce protectiveness on her own mother's face as she told her plainly that if she had been taking into care then she would have killed her father without hesitation—back then she wouldn't have survived in a care home, and she had been thankful that her father had decided to leave on his own freewill after his little chat with the police then attempt to stay.

Slowly she straightened some of the worst of her mangled fingers under the gaze of Ms Maximoff and both watched as her hand healed, flesh mended, bones straightened with clear snaps, and only a bit of blood was left over.

Ana glanced over at the woman.

"Can I come in now?" she asked and Ms Maximoff nodded dumbly and stepped aside for Ana.

* * *

"How was that possible?" Helena near-breathed out as she stared with wide-eyes at the other woman, the obviously younger woman.

The woman, Ana, didn't even glance back as she was more focused on the objects that were frozen in air as the twins stared at her with wide, fearful, eyes.

"I heal fast," she said blandly with a shrug and Helena wanted to laugh—that was putting it mildly. "I'm Gifted," she glanced back at Helena with glacier blue eyes that made her want to shiver. "Like your children."

"Do you," Helena paused as she licked her suddenly dry lips, "know how they can do these things?"

"Yes," Ana's attention seemed to have wandered to a vase with some dying flowers in it that was near her. "It's a genetic quirk really."

"They got it from their father then," Helena almost muttered. "He could bend metal."

"Was his name Erik?" Ana glanced at her as she gracefully weaved her way to the twins.

"Yes," Helena almost stammered in shock. "How did…?"

"Erik and I are old friends, basically grew up together." Ana explained though she looked barely twenty and Helena knew that Erik would be in his thirties. "He's the only one I know that can bend metal."

"Why are you here?" Peter demanded and Helena didn't know if she wanted to scold him for being rude or thank him for asking that question for her.

"A friend of mine, another Gifted person, is opening a school for people like us," Ana explained, her attention seemed to be only on the twins. "It's to be a place of safety, where we can use our powers freely and without fear. It is also a place to help others learn to control your powers."

"I don't need to learn control," Peter boasted before he blurred around Ana so fast her hair swirled in the sudden whirlwind. "See?" he asked as he stopped back in his place, a proud look on his face.

Ana didn't seem to care that her hair was now a mess as she smiled at Peter, and Helena almost wanted to snatch her son away from Ana's gaze as there was something wrong with how Ana smiled.

"I once knew a speedster," she began softly. "He was a lot like you, and he got so bored sometimes because it seemed like the world was in slow motion and he was the only one going at the right speed."

Helena could see from the look on Peter's face that he had also felt that.

"I don't know of anyone that will keep up with your speed," Ana admitted. "But I can tell you that this school will be interesting, and I'll do my very best to keep from getting bored."

"You're a teacher?" Helena asked and Ana looked over at her.

"Yes," she answered. "I'm the PE teacher, though you yanks call it Gym."

Helena eyed Ana's tall and slender frame and could see her doing a lot of sports.

"This will be the best for them," Ana told her and Helena swallowed.

"I'll think about it," she allowed and Ana nodded as she began to make her way back to the door, obviously realising that Helena wanted her to leave.

But she paused right next to Helena and leaned down to whisper in her ear;

"You want to protect them? They are your children, of course you do. You'll do everything in your power, you'll try to stop them for abusing their powers and eventually they will rebel, resent your rules, and not see why you make them in the first place. They will break them and will draw attention, some Government group will swoop in and lock them up for study. I've been a lab-rat, Ms Maximoff, it is not something any child should go through."

With those words and something pressed into her hands, Ana James slipped out of the door and left Helena standing there, staring at her children as they already began to wonder what this school was like, and a stiff piece of card pressed in her hand.


	16. Chapter 16

If there was one thing that would never truly change was the fact that she wasn't a morning person. Sure, as soon as she woke up and was properly awake, likely after her morning bathroom routine, she wouldn't fall back to sleep and she would be able to keep going till she fell into bed that night.

But she was never truly happy about being awake, and the part of her that hadn't really grown up, the part that had been able to play pokémon through almost everything, the part that had ignored Nick Fury and make fun of him, the part that didn't care about whining in front of others, let everyone know just unhappy she was.

* * *

Sean refrained from flinching as Ana near slammed her plate of simply buttered toast on to the kitchen table. Perhaps if he didn't move, he wouldn't draw her attention—he read that sometimes worked with angry animals.

Charles almost snorted into his coffee as that stray thought caught his attention.

"You know," Emma began. "Most people drink coffee in the morning to really wake up."

"If you bring that disgust sludge that you yanks dare could a drink near me, Barbie, I swear I cut of all your pretty blonde hair," Ana told her before she bit into one of the pieces of toast.

"Don't tell me," Emma tossed her hair lightly. "You're a tea person, how very cliché."

"Actually I hate all hot drinks," Ana told her before she eyed Emma in almost obvious distain. "And if we're talking about clichés"—"We're not," Charles hastily cut in though was ignored—"Have you looked at yourself? Blonde, blue-eyed, and dressed like a slut. Hello Queen Cliché."

Sean refrained from gasping or grinning as he stared at the sneer on Ana's face before looking at Emma's reddening features. He was sure that he saw Alex smirk before Alex near-shovelled another spoonful of cereal in his mouth, and he knew he saw Erik wince slightly.

Azazel leaned back in his seat, he crossed his legs, and simply watched like he was watching a TV show while Riptide—newly named Marcus—hunched closer over his breakfast.

"You little bitch," Emma's voice was high enough to cause almost everyone wince though Ana just smirked at her—Sean was very glad that Emma didn't have his power. "At least I have assets worth showing off."

"Is that the best you can come up with?" Ana taunted. "To hurt my feelings? I've obviously been overestimating your wit."

Emma's eyes hardened and grew cold as she stared at Ana and what happened next happened too fast for Sean to properly see.

One moment Emma was simply staring at Ana then Ana's chair crashed behind her as she stood with her arm out reached towards where Emma had stumbled back against the wall and Emma screamed as she reached up with one trembling hand to touch her badly bleeding ear and just missing the knife buried deep into the wall next to her head with some of her white blonde hair attached to it.

"STAY OUT OF MY HEAD!" Ana shouted, the first time she had ever shouted before.

Her glacier eyes harden in pure fury, going so cold they almost burnt hot.

Alex stood up, his hands glowing an ominousness red, as he fixed his scowl on Emma, his body taunt and ready to defend Ana—though she didn't actually need to be defended.

Marcus looked like he was going to stand to so he could defend his friend, but Angel's hand clamped around his wrist and kept him in his seat as she warily watched the confrontation.

Azazel didn't even flinch to help Emma, a strangely amused smile quirked his lips as he watched, while Erik stayed seated though his gaze was fixed on Ana, his gaze wary.

"Ana!" Charles had stood as well, but he was ignored as Ana near snarled at Emma.

"Go into my head again, Barbie, and I use you for target practice," Ana promised darkly.

Emma, still shaking with shock and slightly pale, automatically shot back.

"Looks like you need it as you missed,"

"I don't miss," Ana said simply as she shot a look at Erik beside her.

"A murder at the breakfast table would put people off their breakfast," Erik said blandly. "Besides we need her in our little group and as a teacher."

"You just want to screw her," Alex scoffed though the glow around his hands lessened.

Erik inclined his head but said nothing.

"You're very touchy about your mind," Emma observed as she took the towel that Hank kindly held out to her and used it to stem the bleeding, slowly coming out of her shock.

"I like my privacy," Ana replied, her anger simmering down until her eyes were just a tad flinty.

"You live with two mind-readers," Emma scoffed. "Privacy is a luxury that isn't always possible."

"Charles seems to be able to keep out of my head," Ana said, a cold look directed at Emma.

Sean was sure that was some sort of insult implied in what she said as Emma's features twisted.

"Well, bully for him," she almost sneered.

BANG!

Sean almost completely jumped at off his skin and Raven gave a soft scream of surprise as her head snapped away from the show and towards where her brother was standing, one hand having just slammed down heavily on the table.

"Enough," Charles it seemed had finally reached his limit. "This is going to be a school, where mutant children will come for safety and protection. We will be their teachers, role-models, and protectors.

So no more violent arguments," he glared at Ana then, "no more swearing, no more throwing knives at anyone that pisses you off, no more walking back to room from the bathroom in just your underwear," he then turned to Emma, "no more going through people's mind, no taunting them with fears or starting fights, and no you can't say you're helping them face their fears and such, and put on more clothes, please," he turned to Azazel, "no dangling students off the roof because they don't listen to you, no death threats, no just randomly porting somewhere to scare them," he turned to Erik, "no messing with their fillings or anything if they don't listen to you and you want to get their attention, no pinning them to the ceiling with their belt buckles, no attempting to recruit them in your _secret_,"—Charles stressed that word—"group," he then faced Alex, "no losing your temper and destroying something in front of them."

He glared firmly around the room, a hint of red to his face.

"This is going to be a school, a place of learning and safety, do I make myself clear?"

"Yes Charles," Emma, Azazel and Raven said while Alex, Ana and Erik inclined their heads in agreement as the rest of the others nodded.

Emma's head cocked slightly to the side as if she was listening to something.

"Were you expecting guests, Charles?" she asked.

"No and I don't know why she's bringing her children here," Charles frowned and Ana's face finally cleared of all left over anger.

"I forgot to tell you," Ana said almost idly and Charles looked at her. "I've recruited two students, a speedster and telekinetic, twins too."

"And you didn't tell me?" Charles sounded strangled and Ana shrugged.

"I forgot," she answered simply.

Sean was very glad he wasn't the one receiving Charles' look though it didn't seem to bother Ana as she almost happily went back to her breakfast.

The mood-swings really scared Sean, especially Ana's.

* * *

They had Erik's eyes, Charles noticed and immediately wondered if Erik knew about them because it was obvious that Ana had known or they wouldn't be here at that moment.

The boy almost vibrated in one place, his gaze darting around the room as though he was just itching to get to know the place. His bags—Ana had obviously told the family that it was a boarding school—had been dumped carelessly on the ground. He was obviously the speedster, and his dark hair was starting to gain white streaks in them—perhaps because of the shock of moving so fast?

His sister had inherited her mother's darker hair tone and seemed to be almost attempting to hide behind a curtain of hair, though her blue gaze was as fierce as her father's. She kept a white-knuckled grip on the straps of one of her bags and shifted uneasily—obviously she didn't share her brother's excitement.

Their mother stood behind them, her hands on their shoulders—a comforting hand for her daughter and a restraining hand for her son—and stared at him almost warily.

"Hello," he smiled at them, hoping to ease both the mother and daughter. "I'm Professor Charles Xavier, welcome to my school."

* * *

Ana knew immediately when the twins were allowed to wander off alone—though she was certain that Charles had attempted to assign them a guide, who was likely still with Wanda—as one of her guns went missing after a sudden breeze in her room.

Luckily for Peter, her gun wasn't loaded and she kept her ammo locked up somewhere out of prying eyes. Otherwise she would have to hunt him down almost ruthlessly or Charles, and perhaps Erik, would never let her hear the end of it.

"Oh, Peter," she clicked her tongue. "You don't know how lucky you are."

Sadly because of Charles' rules and the fact that she actually respected Charles enough to follow his rules—mostly—she couldn't throw something sharp at Peter—he was too quick for it to actually hit him though she doubted that would matter to Charles.

* * *

She found the speedster walking behind Hank as he showed the twins around—most likely Hank hadn't even known that Peter had made a side-trip.

Hank's shoulders were slightly hunched—still insecure with his new looks—and he spoke carefully not to reveal all his sharp teeth though neither child seemed put off by his appearance—and if they were slightly scared of him? Well, she was going to prove why most of the people in the manor were scared of her in one way.

Peter was too busy listening to Hank to hear her coming so Ana was one the very few people that would ever manage to catch the speedster.

He jerked as her hand landed heavily on his shoulder, the slight tension under her hands told her he was about to run so she wrapped her arms firmly around him and pulled him back against her, feeling the familiar shape of her gun against her stomach.

"I keep all of my windows shut," she told him quietly in his ear and he stilled completely. "So it was obvious what happened when just after a strange breeze, one of my guns ends up missing."

She easily removed the gun from where he had tucked it under the band of his jeans with a soft sigh—why men seemed to constantly tuck guns into the back of their trousers she'll never know.

"You steal from me again, and I will show you why I'm the biggest bitch in this manor, got it?" she told him, her voice filled with a dark promise, and he nodded just as Hank seemed to realise that he was missing one preteen.

"Ana?" Hank asked in confusion and she smiled at him, her gun hidden behind her back as she let go of Peter.

"Sorry," she shrugged. "He just looks so much like Erik did when he was young, and still cute, that I couldn't help myself."

Hank eyed her, obviously not buying her bullshit.

Lucky she was saved by Erik.

He halted and stared unblinkingly between the twins, most likely seeing features that he saw in the mirror daily as well as the same eyes, and she knew the moment that just who was in front of him seeped in his brain as his face paled and he stumbled back slightly.

"Congrats," she drawled out, a smirk twisting her lips. "It's a boy and a girl."

Erik choked and she almost laughed though she held it in as she walked over to him—gun keeping out of Hank's sight for he would surely tell Charles that she had one of her weapons around 'impressionable' children—and patted him on the back.

"I told you to always wear a rubber," she told him with no sympathy and he choked again, a hint of red to his cheeks, and she grinned—she had missed the good old days when she could make him blush like the virgin he had been.

* * *

**AN: Who do you want as Ana's love interest? I'm leaning towards Logan, but I'm open to ideas as long as you have good reasons why. **


	17. Chapter 17

The room was dimly lit by the crackling fire as Erik stared at the amber liquid in his tumbler and slugged it back, feeling the almost comforting heat slide down his throat and settle in his stomach.

"Do I have other children out there?" he asked, though he didn't look back as Ana silently walked around him and let herself gracelessly fall onto the couch.

He always knew when she was around, he had spent most of his life with her and was hyper-aware of her presence.

"You have another little girl," she told him quietly. "She hasn't yet unlocked her mutant powers."

"Were you ever going to tell me?" he asked as he looked at her, a hint of anger in his eyes.

"Eventually," she answered evenly—his anger had never threatened her, never made her falter, and he knew it sometimes amused her.

"I deserved to know," he almost snarled at her and she smiled at him coolly.

"Why? Because you are their father? You are just a sperm-donor, a man that had sex with their mothers and didn't bother to keep in touch or keep an eye on them to see if they were pregnant," she shrugged. "I think you deserve a bit of shock, Daddy."

"Did you keep an eye on all of them?" he asked, settling down some as ranting at Ana had never done anything in the past.

"I have kept an eye on yours and Alex's bed partners just in case," she paused them and shot him an almost disapproving look. "Thankfully Alex remembers to wear a rubber, unlike some people."

He flushed almost as deeply as he did when Ana had sat him down to have the Talk after she caught him giving a girl a long look.

"What am I meant to do with them?" he asked quietly and Ana sighed as she stood.

She placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and met his gaze firmly, her normal glacier eyes warmed to an almost oceanic colour.

"Get to know them," she told him easily like it was the simplest thing in the world. "Don't attempt to act like you have the right to be their father until then. They don't know you and you don't know them, you're strangers despite blood ties."

* * *

"What the hell is that?" Ana asked in curiosity and Hank smiled at her, a careful closed mouth smile, which made her almost glare at him in reproach.

"It's—"he was cut off before he could really get into it.

"English for us less intelligent people," Ana cut in as Erik walked over to them with Peter.

Hank sighed before he gestured towards where he had set up his latest invention.

"This machine will help me measure how fast Peter can run while also informing how long it takes for him to become tired," he explained and Peter looked at it oddly.

"How?" he asked.

"You press this button every time you pass it on your runs around the manor," Hank told him. "Until you become tired. Ready for this Peter?"

"Sure," Peter shrugged as he got ready and then he was gone.

"Out of idle curiosity," Ana began as he watched his machine intently. "What would happen to the machine if he was able to push the button more than, say, three times a minute?"

"It would crash," Hank frowned as he looked at her. "But I doubt he can—"

Whatever he was able to say was cut off by his machine crashing as Peter skidded to a halt beside Ana.

"I didn't do it!" he quickly shot out as Hank stared at the crashing, smoking, invention that he had spent two days on in almost horror.

"He's very fast," Ana said in the same way that she had once said 'I heal fast,' and Hank nodded dumbly.

Like before, she was putting it mildly.

"I'll help you take it back to your room, Hank," Erik sighed as he easily used his power to move the bulky metal machine and Hank trailed after him.

"I guess you're with me then?" Ana asked as she glanced down at Peter.

* * *

Ana had once read the X-men comics—though she hadn't read any of the early ones mostly because the more modern chapters had made the art of the early comics look silly—and knew that Wanda was supposedly a witch that could alter the world around her.

So far, Ana had only witnessed Wanda levitating things and had written her off as a simple telekinetic—the comics and movies weren't the complete stories after all, and Wanda had never had her moment of spotlight in any of the X-Men movies, unlike Peter. Of course Wanda would turn around and surprise her in a way that proved that she was Erik's daughter and Ana hadn't corrupted him like Charles thought.

* * *

Peter fiddled with his brand new goggles, a gift from Ana, and grinned making Wanda roll her eyes.

"Does Peter have a girlfriend?" she mockingly asked. He narrowed his eyes at her, a flush creeping up his cheeks.

"Shut up, no, that's gross," he pretended to gag though Wanda didn't buy it.

"Really?" she asked, a smirk (the one he hated) curling on her lips. He was moving before he even really thought about it and pushed her.

Wanda went flying and her head hit against the wooden floor with a loud crack making Peter flinch. She sat up, dark hair covering most of her face, her fierce-angry-pained-wet blue eyes peeking out from the dark strands. She glared at him as she lashed out with one arm—uselessly in his mind—and watched as a bolt of red energy raced toward him unexpectedly, catching him off-guard and sending him flying over the couch. He found himself flat on his back staring up at the ceiling as he attempted to catch his breath.

After a moment of shocked silence, Wanda rushed towards her brother's side.

"PETER!" she shouted in alarm as she dashed towards him.

"That," he wheezed, "was awesome."

With a shaky laugh, Wanda wanted to both slap and hug him.

"Huh," Ana's voice startled them and both looked towards the open doorway where she stood, her hip resting against the doorway, Erik—their father, apparently—just behind her. "Looks like she needed anger to unlock her powers like you did."

Erik's blue eyes, their eyes, scanned them and he inclined his head.

"It seems so," he mused. "That wasn't telekinesis."

"No," Ana agreed, her arms crossed under her bust as she stared almost calculatingly at Wanda, who fought the desire to shiver under those glacier eyes. "It was like Alex's power."

It wasn't that Wanda disliked Ana. Ana was nice in her own way. The older woman was only obviously mean to Emma and the blonde gave as good as she got. But Wanda had a healthy dose of respectful fear for the woman, especially after seeing her almost brutally taking down both Alex and Erik in what they classed as a friendly spar; and the ease in which she would held, played with, and cleaned her knives didn't do anything to discourage that fear. He always had them at hand, as if she needed to keep her hands busy—something that she did despite Professor Xavier's glares and muttered warnings.

She smiled then at Wanda, though Wanda noticed it did little to warm her ice-cold eyes.

"Looks like I'm your main teacher now," she told the girl easily. Wanda almost gulped. "Charles didn't teach Alex how to control his powers after all."

Frankly, Wanda didn't care if Professor Xavier hadn't a clue how to train her. She was willing to take her chances and Erik seemed to realise her unease.

"He'll probably like to observe though," he remarked and Ana nodded easily.

"Ever the curious professor," she agreed with an almost humorous smile.

* * *

"We could always rob a bank," Azazel suggested as he tossed his knife idly.

"Unfortunately," Emma sighed as she peered critically at her painted nails, "Charles wouldn't approve."

"Charles still naively believes that everything will be alright in the end," Erik added as Ana flopped her feet into his lap.

He grimaced, a reaction to how close her feet had almost hit a rather important part of him, but didn't attempt to push them off—it would have been a waste of time really.

"We don't have to worry about money for a while," Marcus pointed out quietly. "Charles is rather well off."

"He also doesn't have a single clue about everything that will be needed in the future," Ana spoke up. "When the school becomes a proper school, one with more than two students, we will have to tell the government that we are a mutant-school, even if we don't tell the public. They will watch us and some areas of the government will not leave us to teach peacefully."

She glanced around at them.

"We'll need escape tunnels and safe-houses set up if we're ever attacked, amongst other things," she told them.

There was a beat of silence.

"My family was rather well-off," Emma announced. "I suppose that I could add some funds to this school."

"We should invest in some companies," Marcus added.

"Stark Industries," Ana immediately said and Erik nodded as he wrote things down in his notebook.

"I also may have two other potential students/helpers," Emma said softly and waited till everyone looked at her. "I have some family, Kayla and Emma."

"You actually have a family member named after yourself?" Ana stared at her in disbelief. "Wow, Barbie, you're even more arrogant then I thought."

"Bitch," Emma hissed at her and Ana smirked.

"Whore,"

Erik refrained from sighing out loud.

"Children," Azazel clicked his tongue and dodged, landing perched on the couch behind Ana with a lazy smirk. The knife passed through a puff of red, brimstone-smelling smoke, and hit the wall deeply with a thud.

There was a muffled gasp that made Marcus straighten up and glance around the room with intent eyes.

"Finished spying yet, Peter?" Ana asked idly. Erik tensed, a softly-spoken curse slipping past his lips as Peter's head peeked up from behind the chair that Azazel had been sitting on before and Erik glared.

"You didn't think to tell me that he was there," Erik hissed as he glared between Emma and Ana.

"He was doing a good job for a kid," Ana shrugged.

"You didn't notice him so I didn't feel the need to point him out," Emma remarked idly.

Erik decided not to point out how much they could be alike.

* * *

"So that's her?" Alex asked as he watched the brunette smile at the children that surrounded her. "It's surprising to see any relation of Emma's nice and happy with kids."

Ana said nothing as she stared out of the front window of the car, her hands still wrapped around the wheel.

It had been an early fan theory that Emma and Kayla Silverfox was meant to be the daughters of Emma Frost in the movies as Emma Silverfox and Emma Frost shared the same diamond form, and Kayla had some form of low telepathic power—tactile hypnosis—which they theorized had came from Emma Frost.

In the comics, Kayla hadn't been a mutant though she had been given an artificial healing factor like Ana had once had as Hope. She had also been a Hydra agent with no official name given.

They were actually Emma Frost's nieces in this universe.

But Ana didn't really care because she knew the pain that Kayla would one day put Logan through. She wasn't being invited to Xavier's. Her younger sister on the other hand—that _Emma_ was slowly coming to the age when most people unlocked their powers—she would be watched over.

"She's doesn't seem to need help," Ana said and Alex glanced at her. "She's obviously built a life so we won't get involved."

"You sure?" Alex asked and Ana restarted the car.

"Yep,"

"Seems like we wasted our time coming here," he said in what could almost be called a grumble.

"Think of it as a road trip," she shrugged as she pulled away from the school that Kayla was working at.

"Last time we had a road trip," he began drily. "We were hunting Nazis."

"And isn't this more relaxing?" she asked with a quirk of her mouth.

"Europe was more interesting," he told her and she nodded with a laugh. "Do we have to get back right away?"

"What? Did you miss me?" she teased and glanced over when he didn't immediately retort. Her face softened making her sharp features much less so. "It's still strange, isn't it? Living with other people?"

"Half of them tried to kill you," he didn't turn his gaze from the blurry scenery.

"Only Azazel actually attempted to kill me," she corrected as if that made it better.

He only grunted in reply.

"I suppose Charles can handle Wanda's training," she mused and he glanced at her. "Let's have a little holiday, hmm? Just the two of us?"

"If you want," he replied with what he hoped was a nonchalant tone, though from the small grin was quirking on her lips, said she heard the barely hidden excitement.

* * *

Alex had been with Ana since he was fifteen—she had walked in his life when he was confused and ready to fall down a path of anger and self-loathing—and hadn't actually spent a lot of time apart from her. He wasn't like Erik who would sometimes take off for a few days to hunt down some Nazis by himself.

The longest time he spent away from her was when he had found the wonders of sex—after the most humiliating talk Ana had ever given him as she described in great detail the joys and pains of sex, with both men and women ('so you're prepared with whoever takes your fancy,' she had said with an almost innocent blink of her big blue eyes when he had spluttered at her with red-hot cheeks).

So it was totally normal for him to feel a bit lonely—especially when Ana had found someone as fucked up as she was (her own words) who she could share her sadistic side with—and he wasn't being that childish or clingy or whatever.

Anyway, Ana needed this as much as he did really. There had been a tension to her frame that lessened before fully disappearing as they drove further away from Xavier's, and from everyone else.

They had been basically nomads for over ten years—twenty odd years for Erik and Ana—and it was strange to stay in one place, one country, for more than a couple of weeks. And they were used to it being just the three of them.

No matter how much they liked the others or got on with them, they would always be more comfortable with each other. It also didn't matter how much Xavier's had become like their home, they still needed to get out and leave once in a while. They weren't used to being tied down by anyone but each other.

It was nice to see Ana relax; the little frown between her eyebrows that he had been afraid would become permanent as the pressure to constantly keep her mind under control—or as under control as she could make it—to keep Emma and, to a lesser degree, Charles from reading her mind disappeared. The slight tension in her frame from being around people she didn't trust was gone, there was a more genuine quirk of her lips of an unconscious smile, and the warmth in her gaze that turned them oceanic blue. She was free in a way that she wouldn't let herself be around Xavier's.

Back at the school, she walked around like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. She seemed to be constantly on alert like an attack could come at any moment, and Alex knew that she was going out on missions for Erik and his little group—all to keep them safe, she would say—at night which made her more grumpy in the mornings—something that no one liked.


	18. Chapter 18

"_Bad things happen to those who mess with Time, Harry," Albus Dumbledore said that, or would one day when J.K Rowling wrote Harry Potter. _

_Time is changeable, Time is constant, and Time will always catch up and kill you. _

_The Future, some thought it was set in stone while others thought it was always changing. Some thought you should let the Future play out as it should, and some think if you know the future, and know it's going to be hell, that you should change it._

_Some wonder if it was really up to us to decide to change the future or not. What if you make it worse and not better? What if you end the world because of your selfishness? What if you save the life of someone you love, someone you care for, and a hundred innocents die in their place?_

_That would make most people hesitate, make them wonder if they had the right to change things, make them second-guess each decision and each action they make. _

_Me? I'm just too damn selfish to do nothing and I was ruthless enough to do anything._

_And I think that's why Charles fears me, he's seen into my mind, seen who I am, what they made me, and that frightens him. _

_Charles was a good man, a bit too naïve and a bit too sheltered, but a good man overall. Me? I'm not a good person, I'm not the hero type—not like Steve was and is, not like Charles, not like Tony, not like Rogue, not like Kurt, not like Peter, not like James and Clarice, not like Scott and Jean, not like Kitty, not like Bobby, not like Storm or even Logan—and I don't care._

* * *

"If I told you what I was, would turn your back on me?" Ana sung under her breathe as she drove. "And if I seemed dangerous, would you be scared?"

Alex didn't open his eyes as he listened to her sing, Ana couldn't sing that well but he had always enjoyed the moments when she would sing parts of songs that she obviously used to listen to but Alex had never been able to find for her.

Some people had memories of their mom's singing lullabies, Alex had memories of Ana singing strange songs that he could never find.

In a strange way—that would probably horrify Ana—she was kind of like a mom to him. She had taught him things like; to control his power, how to fight bare-handed and with knives, how to make a home-made bomb—something that he doubted he would ever need to use—how to take care of his knifes, how to load and shot a gun as well as clean it, how to pick locks, how to lie, how to stitch a wound, how to defuse a bomb, how to fix holes in his clothes, and how to cook the basics so he didn't starve.

She took care of him, bandaged and treated his wounds, comforted him after his nightmares—of exploding in anger just because some jackass had walked into him when he had a bad day, of screams and fire, and smoke, of being pulled out and arrested—and would fiercely protect him.

Some guys may have had a crush on the woman that basically saved them from Hell, but Alex never did. You would have to be blind not to realise that Ana had zero interest in basically everyone—well at least that was what he thought.

* * *

Blue eyes, almost glacier in colour, often flashed through his mind. Eyes that shined with tears that didn't fall and stared with such heartbreak, anger and sadness with undertone of pure love that it made him wonder how she actually knew him because it had been so painfully obvious in that one look, like a punch to the face, that the woman knew _him_.

Yet, he knew he had never met her before, he wouldn't have even known her name if that posh bastard hadn't called her Ana—he still didn't know what he and his friend wanted.

It wasn't just her eyes or that look that she had worn on her face that kept circling in his mind. It was also her scent. There was a deep undertone of something metallic, iron and copper mixed together, which he knew was blood—how many times had he had to claw himself out of piles of bodies on the battlefield with that smell burning his nostrils, mixing with the cloying smell of death, with blood sipping under his nails and hardening there like a thin macabre ruby slivers.

That woman smelt like blood like he and Viktor did, she had killed enough people that their very blood had become part of her—a weight that she would carry forever, perhaps unknowingly or knowingly.

The rest of her scent was standard; pleasant smelling soap and shampoo.

This woman plagued him in a way that no other woman had in the past and it was stupid because he only saw her once before. But something deep in him ached, sympathetic pain perhaps, when he thought about the look that she had given him before she fled, that last lingering conflicting look, and how she almost hesitated at the door like she was waiting, hoping and wanting, him to call her back but he didn't.

He knew he should put her out of his mind, there was hardly a chance that he would met her again.

But it seemed the God he had once believed in, and before long lost faith in, had other plans.

* * *

"Still brooding about that girl, Jimmy?" Viktor teased, a small hint of concern in his dark eyes that he only showed him.

"Shut-up," he grunted before he took a long pull of his drink.

They were in some little bar in the backend of nowhere, where no one gave them a second look and let them drink in peace.

"Seriously, you need to let her go," Viktor told him, something he had told him repeatedly over the year, and signalled for some more beers. "You what? Saw her once and fall in love? That pitiable, Jimmy. Get over her, go find another girl, screw her until it's all out of your system."

Logan rolled his eyes, of course that was his brother's advice.

"Damn weather," the sudden outburst, easily heard over the quiet conversation of the patrons, and he glanced up automatically with a light scowl as the door slammed closed behind the newest patrons and almost choked as he stared at the woman that was cursing softly as she roughly pulled her wet dark hair up with a young blonde man running his own hands through his wet hair, flicking rain everywhere.

"I thought you would be used to the rain," the man made a face as he near had to peel his wet jacket off. "You're British, it's always raining in England."

The woman—Ana—rolled her glacier eyes as she removed her leather jacket as she strolled towards an empty table, her friend behind her.

"You know that's not true, Alex," there was a fondness in her tone that made Logan narrow his eyes on the man—Alex. "We went there for you eighteenth, it only rained two days."

"I don't really remember much of that week," Alex remarked drily as they slipped into chairs. "I was drunk most of the time remember?"

"You were an adorable drunk darling," she patted his hand softly with a smirk which made him scowl.

"As my official guardian, one would think you would have disproved of me drinking," Alex shot back and Logan blinked, his glare lessening, in surprise.

She was _his_ guardian?

"Most would have been jumping for joy that their guardians thoughtfully took them to a country where they could get pissed on their birthday," she commented, her dry tone matching his from before.

Logan wondered if Alex had learnt it from her, because the tone was almost completely the same deadpan.

He was standing before he really thought about it, and ignored the hissed question from his brother as he made his way towards her—he wasn't letting her leave easily this time.

* * *

Ana pursed her lips as she scanned the menu that the bar had, it wasn't much but it would fill a hole as her mum used to say.

"Chips?" she offered to Alex as he looked over his own menu.

"They serve burgers too," Alex commented. "Chips and burgers?"

"Sure," she shrugged, pretending to not notice someone walking towards them.

If you looked busy, most people tended to leave as they didn't want to be rude—those poor polite fools.

"Ana, right?"

Ana stiffened, her eyes widened as she slowly looked up at meet familiar dark eyes.

"Oh fuck," slipped from her lips and he smirked.

"Ana?" Alex questioned, his gaze fixed warily on Logan.

"Perhaps you should order our food, Alex," Ana almost sighed, she recognised that look. Logan wasn't going to leave nor was he letting her leave until he got answers.

Frankly she wasn't sure if she should be surprised that he remembered her or not.

* * *

She looked like a doe caught in head-lights, Logan mused as he slowly slid into the warm seat of that Alex kid. He had, grudgingly, gone to order their food.

"You seem surprised," he commented.

"Wouldn't you be surprised if a stranger came up to you and knew your name?" she countered.

"I'm not a stranger though," he narrowed his eyes slightly. "You know me."

"And you don't know me," she replied, seemingly relaxing in her chair.

"No," he said. "How do you know me?"

"Do you really want to know?" she seemed almost honestly curious as she asked.

"Would I be here if I didn't?" he asked in turn.

"What if I told you that it could change everything you believe in?" she interrogated. "What if what I tell you things that will change the way you look at everyone and everything? What if it shakes the foundation of everything you've done in your life?"

"And if I said I don't care,"

"I still wouldn't tell you," she told him simply.

"Why?" he demanded in almost a growl.

"Because you're not ready," she threw up a hand to cut him off. "You're contend with who you are, what you are doing, how you're living your life."

"And you know when I'll be ready?" he questioned.

"One day, you will stand on the edge of change. You will question who you are, what you have done and what your future holds. That will be when you come to seek me out, and I will tell and show you everything," she told him, her glacier eyes serious and calm.

"Everything?" he doubted that and she smiled.

"I trust you," such simple words almost shook him because of the pure conviction in her tone, only Viktor had ever trusted him that much before.

"With your life?" he questioned, flexing his hands and almost wondering if she knew what lurked just beneath his skin.

"My life doesn't mean much," she disregarded. "I trust you with my loved ones."

And that said everything really.

"How will I find you then?" he asked with a hint of a sigh, he was resigned to doing things her way for now—she seemed to be as stubborn as him.

She smiled, the same fondly amused smile she had given Alex before, and pulled a pen from her jacket pocket before reaching for his hand.

For a moment she just held it, her thumb rubbing the skin where one of his claws came through, and her gaze went distance—lost in memories—before she pulled the cap from the pen with her teeth and began to write an address on the inside of his left arm.

As she pulled back, he caught sight of the scrawled numbers on her left arm, and looked up at her.

"Where..?" he couldn't finish his question, but she knew—of course she knew.

"Auschwitz," she told him simply as she pulled back and smiled at the approaching Alex. "Goodbye now."

* * *

"You're not afraid?"

Ana peeked up from where she was relaxing against the grass, she could hear Wanda and Peter having fun further away.

"Afraid of what?" she asked Charles, one hand shielding her eyes from the gaze of the sun.

"The future, the unknown," there was a hint of a frown on his face, he had obviously been brooding on this.

"The future is meant to be unknown," she replied. "But I get what you mean, we'll just have to do our best, yes?"

Our best to stop my past from becoming your future, Charles heard the unspoken words and nodded.

* * *

Peggy Carter then something was off the moment she entered her apartment, her hand automatically reached for her gun as the lights were clicked on.

A woman was sat on her couch like she belonged there, her slender ring adorned fingers were wrapped around one of Peggy's tall glasses filled with orange juice. Her caramel hair framed her face as she looked up with a smile that did little to warm her glacier coloured gaze. A stack of thick brown files were next to her.

"Agent Carter," she greeted. "Sorry for surprising you, but I'm not ready for all of your buddies at SHIELD to know me yet."

"SHIELD?" Peggy repeated as she closed her door, her hand never leaving her gun.

"Less of a mouthful," the woman shrugged, seemingly completely at ease that Peggy could draw her gun at any moment and shoot her—that raised the hair on the back of Peggy's neck in warning, this woman was dangerous. "I'm Ana, and I'm hoping we can begin a beneficial lasting friendship."

"Really?" Peggy raised a single dark eyebrow.

"What do you know about mutants, Agent Carter?" Ana asked as she rested her free hand on her stack of files—all baring the same confidential stamp most likely.

* * *

**AN: So here the latest chapter, what do you think? I've also gone over my previous chapters and I think I've fixed all of the mistakes.**


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